


vanderlyle crybaby cry

by banksoflochlomond



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Aftermath of the prank, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, First War with Voldemort, Fix-It of Sorts, Fuck JK Rowling, Hogwarts Fifth Year, Homelessness, Hurt/Comfort, Like Voldemort's a Mega Idiot, M/M, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Marauders Friendship (Harry Potter), Muggles, Oh also, Purebloods Don't Understand The Power of Muggles, Remus Lupin & James Potter Friendship, Sad Sirius Black, Sirius runs away from home, Suicidal Thoughts, To Their Own Cost Of Course, Voldemort's An Idiot, but nothing happens i promise, it's just. difficult for sirius you know
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 02:28:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 29,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29236059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/banksoflochlomond/pseuds/banksoflochlomond
Summary: James,I had to go, I couldn’t handle it anymore. I know you’re mad at me, I’ve tried not to contact you, I just thought I should let you know that it’s not your fault, it’s theirs, I know you have a stupid complex about things you can’t change sometimes.For what it’s worth, I am sorry. Tell Peter he can have the licorice wands I stored in my school dresser over the summer, they should still be good, I had a preservation charm on them.Tell Moony that I’m sorry, and that I won’t bother him ever again.Sirius(In the aftermath of the prank, Sirius has the worst summer of his life at Grimmauld Place. Not wanting to bother his dearest friends, and feeling trapped, Sirius escapes to the Muggle World, leaving behind the Wizarding World for what he thinks is forever. But what he fails to realize is that the past isn't over; it's, for a lack of a better word, not even past.)
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Sirius Black & James Potter, Sirius Black & Remus Lupin, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 77
Kudos: 152





	1. November 1976

**Author's Note:**

> this ends with rhiannon fuckin killing voldemort with a gun.
> 
> you think i'm kidding but i'm not

Rhiannon isn’t the most charitable woman in the world.

No one who grew up needing to pinch money between their fingers is, though. Every scrap, every cent she got tossed, she kept in her back pocket, or in her little coin purse, or in the shoebox under the bed of her children’s home. When shirts and trousers got holes, she sewed them back together instead of buying new ones. She had a pair of Converse that had torn in three places, and she just stuck safety pins in them and continued to wear them proudly. 

Even when she got her thrift shop--a wonderful turn of luck, really, and absolutely unexpected, seeing as Rhiannon didn’t know she’d had a living grandpa until he’d died and left the shop to her when she was only twenty-four--even then, when money flowed a bit easier and even if it didn’t, she could take things from her own inventory to make up the difference, she’d still kept track of every pound note she’d been handed, and kept the till locked up tight and careful at nights. Some nights she’d even take the till up to the flat above her thrift shop and set it on her bedroom dresser, just out of pure paranoia of waking up and realizing all her accrued money had vanished somehow in the night.

So it stands to reason that she’s never handed out a single shilling to anyone on the streets. Even when they shake their pitiful paper cups at her, and she remembers how close she was to being the same as them, especially when she’d turned eighteen and had suddenly not needed a place to stay, at least not by the government’s view. She feels bad for them, but she can’t bring herself to drop a coin in the cup. 

(It should be noted, though, that Rhiannon’s always shown a bit more kindness to strays. She’ll set out dishes of tuna and water for the stray cats that sometimes cried outside on her fire escape, two stories up. Once, about a year ago, she’d taken a little puppy into her home, forcing her to spray down the flat afterward due to fleas, and even took it to the vet and got it treated for worms, even though she really hadn’t had the money to spare at that moment. She’d survived on only porridge for about two months after, but it had been worth it, in her mind. The vet told her the puppy had gotten adopted out to another family, but they’d named it Rhiannon in her honor and also because of the Fleetwood Mac song, which made her feel all sorts of things. 

And of course, there’s that mangy, skinny, huge black dog that everyone seemed afraid of, on her street. He’d shown up and had been there for a couple months now, sometimes kipping underneath the awning to Mr. Parker’s bakery when it rained. He was nothing but skin and bones, and had kind pale grey eyes besides. When she had any sort of meat for dinner, she’d always save a bit of it and head out afterward in search of the dog, giving him a kind pat on the head and smiling when he licked at her wrist.

But no, she doesn’t, and has never, shown as much charity with the homeless around Chelmsford. It’s not that she detests them, she just has a healthy fear from being too much like them.)

So it’s all very confusing, then, when she pops out of her shop around lunchtime and finds a scrawny, bony teenager leaning on the wall outside her shop. She frowns, and wonders whether he’s the reason why not many people have come in today, but that’s perhaps not fair, considering it was a Wednesday in early November, and very dreary outside.

She stares for a while at him, and then immediately turns her back to lock up the shop. When she turns around, he’s already looking at her.

“Hi,” he says. His voice sounds hoarse, and he coughs a bit into his hand. “Um, I was wondering if I could bum a cigarette off of you.”

Rhiannon stares. It seems impossible that this kid would know she smokes. After all, it’s an embarrassing habit she has, and often just does it from the comfort of her bedroom window. The smoke drifts out the window into an empty alleyway, and she hardly ever goes til it’s down to the filter. She’s very careful about it all, having learned how to take the cigarette smoke off herself with strong mints and a bathroom cleaning spray after she’d had a boyfriend who hated the habit.

Well. The kid probably just had a lucky guess. 

And he’s not asking for money, or food, even though, as Rhiannon checks the boy up and down--he’d really rather need both. His hair was long, black, and clearly overgrown, reaching down in tangled webs to his armpits. His face was angular, but she couldn’t tell if it was meant to be that way or if that was simply a result of his scrawny, underweight body. 

Rhiannon clucks her tongue and shoves her hand into her purse, shaking out the carton of cigarettes from underneath her reading glasses case. “Here,” she says, and hands it to him. “Also need a light?”

“If you don’t mind,” the boy says, and breaks his face open into a smile. The skin is taut around his mouth, and his teeth are yellow. Rhiannon pulls out her Bic lighter and flicks the gears until a steady flame starts up, and holds it up next to his cigarette. He lights the cherry with a practiced ease.

Rhiannon watches him as he sinks back against the brick wall, sighing around the cigarette. His wide grey eyes seem to melt into his face a bit, and she’s suddenly reminded of the huge dog that she sees some nights.

“I don’t do money or nothing, so don’t think about asking for that,” Rhiannon warns him, shifting from foot to foot.

The boy shakes his head. “Cigarette’s all I wanted,” he says, and takes a long pull from it, as if to prove his point. “You’re a lifesaver for that one, ma’am.”

“Not a ma’am,” she says. “Probably not even more’n ten, fifteen years older than you. Which may seem like a lot to you, but it means I’m not old, so don’t make me feel it. Why aren’t you in a children’s home?”

The boy smiles, and blows out some more smoke. He taps ash onto the sidewalk next to them with a practiced sort of ease. Rhiannon wonders if the boy’s only familiar with cigarettes, or if it could be something more, too. His eyes certainly seemed clear and lucid enough, though.

“A children’s home wouldn’t work for me,” he says. “They’d send me back to my parents, you see. They wouldn’t find anything wrong with how I’d been living, there. My parents would make sure of that.”

Rhiannon presses her lips together. Her shop keys are still in her hand, and she turns the ring over in her hand, trying to parse out whether she should call the police on him, anyway.

“How long have you been away from home?” she eventually settles on. The boy really didn’t look any older than fifteen, or sixteen, and too unkempt to be able to hold a steady job. The police might still be her best bet.

“It’s been a few months, now,” the boy says.

“And it’s better? Subjecting yourself to the streets?”

“I wouldn’t say it’s better,” the boy says, and sucks in another breath of smoke. “More like it’s just a matter of life and death, and I--well.”

Rhiannon sighs. Teenagers normally were so dramatic about these things, but it was always so hard to tell. Having come from a children’s home, Rhiannon was inclined to believe him, though. And yet she couldn’t, in good conscience, let him alone in front of her shop with nothing but a cigarette to tide him over. At least with adults, she could tell herself that perhaps their own choices led them to the life they had.

“Don’t you have anyone to stay with? A friend, maybe,” Rhiannon says.

A series of complicated expressions seemed to pass over the boy’s face, at that. Finally, he seemed to settle on a shaky sort of indifference--the kind that wasn’t indifference at all. The boy swallows hard, sucks on his cigarette, and then takes it out of his mouth and stamps it under his foot.

“Not anymore, I don’t expect,” is what he finally settles on.

Rhiannon sighs. Shifts from foot to foot again. She suddenly wants a cigarette, herself.

“Have I finally convinced you to give me a pound note?” The boy asks, waggling his eyebrows in a way that may have been charming and fun, if only he weren’t so shrunken and starved. “Perhaps I could even buy a bottle of water, with that sort of cash.”

“I’m usually not charitable,” Rhiannon says.

“So you’ve mentioned,” the boy says. He sticks his hands in his pockets. He’s wearing old, frayed jeans, and an even older, even more frayed polo shirt that gaped open at the collar. He’s nearly swallowed by the size of his clothes, and as if prompted by the thought, Rhiannon’s stomach begins to protest its lack of lunch. She checks her wristwatch, and realizes she’s already been here with the boy for ten minutes, and didn’t even know his name.

She sighs, and pulls out the cigarette carton and lighter again. “I’ll have your name for another one of these,” she offers, already pulling one out and clenching it between her teeth. 

“Oh,” says the boy, obviously surprised. “It’s--ah--it’s--well, it’s John.”

“If you’re coming up with a fake one, you might not wanna stumble when using it, love,” Rhiannon says, but it’s gentler than even she expected. The boy smiles in response, and accepts her lighter and another fag happily.

The boy--well, Rhiannon may as well call him John, if he won’t say his real name--John says, “Can’t have you reporting me to anyone, so it’s just a bit of insurance, really. You don’t seem the type to let teenagers out of sight, which is a shame. All I really wanted was a cigarette, after all.”

Rhiannon takes a deep drag, and breathes out through her mouth, the smoke clouding her vision for a moment. John seems all the more mysterious, when seen through the haze of smoke. “Your best bet was probably Paul, down the street a bit,” she says. “Owns the corner store and he’ll give anyone a pound or two. Doesn’t even try and nose into their business none, Paul doesn’t care much about anything.”

“Yeah, well,” John says. “You seem the nicer type, ‘s all. Got a friendly looking face. And I’ve seen you with, ah. Strays and everything. Appreciated it.”

“They don’t deserve what’s happened to them,” Rhiannon agrees. “You don’t either, you’re just a kid.”

“I wouldn’t go as far as that,” John says, and screws his face up. He’d be rather pretty, Rhiannon decides, if he weren’t so waif-like.

Rhiannon stubs her cigarette out and bites her lip. She really can’t let herself go much longer than a few drags, she’ll just get addicted again, but God did she already want another. 

Finally, she groans, knowing she's already made her decision.

“Well, either way, you need food, and if I can’t get you to the police, may as well feed you. C’mon then, I’m paying.”

John stares at her. “I really wasn’t angling for anything,” he says.

“I’m aware,” she says, a bit shortly. “Probably why it worked. Now, come on then, John. I’m serious.”

Bizarrely, John starts to laugh at that. A bit hysterically really, and Rhiannon starts to rethink her decision before he claps a hand over his mouth, trying to stifle the giggles. “Sorry,” he says, “I just--it’s been a long time since--well, never mind. Thank you so much.”

“Yes, well,” Rhiannon says, and shifts from foot to foot again. “Before I change my mind, let’s go. _John._ Oh, I’m Rhiannon, by the way.”

“Like the Fleetwood Mac--”

“I’m the one with the money,” Rhiannon interrupts, quite loudly. She’s heard that sort of joke enough, honestly.

“Yes, ma’am,” he says. When Rhiannon turns around to glare at him, he just beams again, nearly tripping over his feet to catch up with her like an overly excited puppy. 

Rhiannon stifles her smile by biting down her cheek and staring straight ahead, trying to pay no mind to the skinny mess of a teenager trailing behind her.

***

Remus finds James sitting at the top of the Astronomy Tower hours after curfew, because James is and always has been a dramatic asshole.

Well, Remus revises in his head as he puffs his way up the last few steps: maybe he has reason to be, this year. Maybe today, Remus would let him off the hook, even if he couldn’t let him alone.

James turns to look at Remus, eyeglasses catching and glinting in the moonlight. It’s a gibbous moon, slowly waxing its way to full, guaranteed to reach a perfect circle in four days. It wouldn’t be the first full moon that Remus would have since returning to Hogwarts for sixth year--would actually be the third, and Remus was keeping close track--but it still felt wrong. As if the passage of time was too slow and too fast all at once, off-kilter because of Sirius fucking Black, who always had a habit of doing extraordinary things very casually.

Remus only wishes he was here so that Remus could praise him for this amazing feat and knock him upside the head, in equal measure.

“Hey,” Remus says carefully, dropping himself down on the ledge next to James. The huge, floor-to-ceiling window at the top of the Astronomy Tower gaped open wide, and a bracing breeze made Remus pull his robes tighter around himself. “Looking for the dog star?”

“Yeah,” James says, a bit absentmindedly. In his hand, he was gripping the same yellow, crumpled piece of parchment that usually sat on his bedside table, always carefully placed under a heavy tome or notebook so that it wouldn’t slip away from a draft or go missing in his dresser drawers.

Remus sighs, and carefully pulls the letter from James’s hand with careful fingers. James lets him, and Remus reads through the scrawl yet again, searching through Sirius’s frantic words like it was a code he could break.

_James,_

_I had to go, I couldn’t handle it anymore. I know you’re mad at me, I’ve tried not to contact you, I just thought I should let you know that it’s not your fault, it’s theirs, I know you have a stupid complex about things you can’t change sometimes._

_For what it’s worth, I am sorry. Tell Peter he can have the licorice wands I stored in my school dresser over the summer, they should still be good, I had a preservation charm on them._

_Tell Moony that I’m sorry, and that I won’t bother him ever again._

_Sirius_

“I just don’t understand how a kid can go missing like that,” James says, yet again. It’s less energetic and indignant than it when he’d said it when he’d gotten that letter in the middle of July, and when he’d said it, pacing back in forth in front of Remus in August with tears in his eyes, and when he’d said it and left the Great Hall in the middle of the Welcome Back feast, all because Evans had asked curiously where Sirius was.

Remus just shrugs one of his shoulders, and sucks in his cheek as he stares out the Astronomy Tower window.

“If I’d forgiven him a bit sooner, maybe he’d…” Remus says, and then trails off. It’s a thought he’s had, over and over again, always stonewalled by the thought of Severus Snape almost dying because of _him._ But now Sirius was gone, and no one knew where, and he could be _dead,_ and he’d done such an awful thing but he hasn’t even shown up to Hogwarts, his favorite place in the entire world…

“You’re not the one who demanded no contact,” James says wearily, leaning back on his elbows. He stares up at the ceiling of the Astronomy Tower, which is charmed to match the outside night sky. Remus spots the dog star in the upper lefthand corner of the ceiling, and swallows hard, watching it drift with the rest of the celestial sphere across the limestone arches.

“I’d just been so fucking mad at him,” James says quietly. “I didn’t even think about the holidays, or how bad they can get for him. I was so caught up in just--but it was such a horrible thing, that he did, I can’t figure out how I’d do things differently, I just--I wish he’d have known he could come to me, anyway. I wish he’d known that, but I never even owled him during the summer. I should have--I was going to, I just--fuck, Moony.”

“I know,” Remus says. Because he did know. God, he knew. He’d been so mad at Sirius, but it was never going to be a forever kind of thing. Just a cold shoulder for a couple months. If Sirius had only come back, if he’d suffered through the first few weeks of sixth year together with them--Remus knows he would’ve caved by now. They’d all be back to themselves. But Sirius had instead run away from home, run away from _Hogwarts,_ run away from the whole fucking Wizarding World, and he’d left a stupid, huge gaping hole in his place. 

“I feel so wrong, just staying here,” James says. “Because he’s out there, and he’s probably alone and he thinks I hate him, if that note is anything to go by.”

Remus swallows around that massive lump building in his throat. Because the thing is, to Remus--not to James, James was too happy for all of it--but sometimes, Remus suspects that the note Sirius left wasn’t just a note explaining why he’d run away. It was something more than that. And much, much worse.

But Remus never said anything about that to James. Especially not now, not on Sirius’s birthday.

He turns--would’ve turned, hell, Remus doesn’t _know_ \--seventeen today. Old enough to do magic without getting caught by the Ministry. Meaning that he’s harder to track, now more than ever.

“He may come back,” Remus offers.

“You don’t believe that,” James says, pressing his lips together. He’s been quieter this year. More prone to fits of melancholy. Losing your best friend will do that to you, Remus supposes. “Sirius has never backed down from a decision in his life. We’re always the ones to--to try and talk sense to him. And now he won’t _talk_ to me…”

“He’s an idiot,” Remus says. “And we’ll look for him, James. Your parents already are, and during holidays we can, too. We’ll find him. C’mon, we’re two of the top students at Hogwarts, Prongs.”

James smiles slightly at the nickname, and throws his head back once more. “I just wish…” 

He trails off, but Remus knows. Sick, hot guilt is churning its way through Remus’s stomach too, and sometimes it makes it hard to swallow down any food at all.

“I know,” Remus says. “I do.”

“I just wish Sirius did,” James says. “I wish he knew how much we want him back.”

"He's an idiot," Remus says, and lays his head on James's shoulder. James cards his hand through Remus's hair, the strokes longer than needed for Remus's shorter hair. Remus appreciates the gesture, anyway.

He stares at the dog star in the upper left corner of the Astronomy Tower ceiling, and wishes that Sirius is all right, but that he's not too happy or anything like that. That Sirius misses them enough to come back.

He wishes that Sirius needs them as much as they need Sirius, more than anything else.


	2. January 1977

When Rhiannon wakes up, she notices that the window in her bedroom is encrusted in wet snow that’s only building up. A thin layer of icicles are already forming in the eaves, visible when she opens the window and jerks her head out. 

Sighing, she gets up, stretching her arms overhead and listening to her shoulders pop. Her regulars at the thrift shop often tells her she seems stressed out, and carries too much of it in her back. A chiropractor once even gave her a coupon for a free session at his office, but his moustache was too greasy and his eyes were much too beady, so she’d ripped it up once he’d left the store.

Maybe everyone was right though. Rhiannon also has a stiff neck this particular morning, and she struggles to turn it to the left as she works at her trap with her knuckles. Or perhaps, Rhiannon muses, she just has a bad mattress, which certainly isn’t the end of the world.

John doesn’t have a mattress at all, after all, and he’s likely to be right outside her storefront. It’s cold and miserable enough that he’s probably going to try his luck for a cigarette or a few pound notes. But considering it was a wet, drizzling snowfall, and quite nippy out besides, Rhiannon figures he may deserve a little extra, today. (Really, he deserves a whole lot more than a little extra; but that's something Rhiannon's been working on.)

So she sets the kettle on, and grabs out a couple of mugs from her cupboard, making sure one of them was a bit chipped and scratched. Then she grabs two of the muffins that she’d gotten at Mr. Parker’s bakery yesterday, and squashes one of them up so it looks suitably dented and a bit unappetizing. Once her kettle whistles, she pours the water into the mugs, dunks in the tea bags, and adds a splash of milk and two sugar cubes only to the better-looking mug.

She wraps the muffins up in napkins and shoves them in her jacket pocket, and then carries the mugs of tea carefully downstairs. Sure enough, when Rhiannon enters the front room of her shop, John is right outside, leaning against the window with his shoulders stiff and arms wrapped tight around him.

Rhiannon sighs, and sets the mugs of tea down on the service counter. She goes to the shop window, flicking the sign around so that “OPEN” faces the outside. Then she unlocks the front door, and pokes her head out.

“Come on in, then,” Rhiannon says, trying to sound as disinterested as possible.

John turns to look at her. His face has gone rather pale from the cold, and his hands are rubbed red and raw as he twists them around and around, trying to blow warmth into them. He’s still wearing his oversized polo and jeans, but has managed to find a long-sleeved shirt that he’s layered underneath it in the few months that she’s known him. Rhiannon knows that it isn’t enough, but doesn’t know how to offer him a coat without it seeming like charity. Which, of course, Rhiannon doesn’t do (and which John seems to have tremendous trouble accepting, as she’s learned).

“Are you sure?” John asks doubtfully. “A freezing, homeless teenager probably won’t do your business any favors.”

Rhiannon rolls her eyes, and produces the squashed-up muffin from her pocket. “This’ll go stale, and I’ve saved myself the better one,” Rhiannon says. “Even got you tea, since you’re such _lovely_ company. And besides, no one ever comes on weekday mornings, ‘s why you came by to ask me for a cigarette today.”

“Got me there,” John says, and follows her into the shop obediently.

Rhiannon gestures at the chipped mug when John reaches the counter. He gratefully sips from it, lips pursing around the scalding tea. Still, he swallows it down, and rolls his shoulders back, a physical reaction to the hot tea seeping its way down his chest and to his stomach.

“So,” Rhiannon says, picking off a bit of her muffin and popping it into her mouth, “About that job offer, then.”

“It’s not a job offer if you can’t legally pay me,” John says, sighing. He tears into his muffin with an awful lot of vigor, and Rhiannon’s eyes are yet again drawn to his thin, bony shoulders. The boy’s nearly skeletal, but still has a broad, if somewhat short frame. He’d fill out nicely, if he didn’t only have a meal once every two weeks, and often those are provided by Rhiannon after she nags him enough that he gives in.

Rhiannon regrets not bringing down the last of her grapes, as well.

“Just take money out of the register,” Rhiannon argues, with a practiced sort of air. She has practiced, of course. Both in front of the mirror, and to John, with whom she’s had this conversation five or so times, by now. “Look, it’d only be about ten dollars a day. Enough for meals, and you could kip on the old cot I can’t ever sell. I’ll even put it in the backroom. It’s freezing out, boy. I can’t, in good conscience, just let you run about when you could go hypothermic every night. Plus, you’d be doing me a favor, as well.”

“You’ve managed the shop well enough on your own,” John says. He drains the rest of his mug, and wipes at his mouth, and shoves the last of his muffin into his mouth. Spitting out crumbs, John says, “you don’t want me around, Rhiannon. I’m no good, I can promise you that.”

Rhiannon sighs. “You say that like I’ve never heard that before. I grew up in a _children’s home,_ love, I’ve seen all manner of different things. I even seen my old caretaker’s body after she had a heart attack. Was the first to stumble across it, and I never cried, not even once, even though the police were suspicious of that, they were. Said it was unnatural, even though I hated the bitch. Nothing’s no good, not for me.”

“You say that,” John says, staring down at the muffin wrapper, now completely empty, bunched up in his hands. He’s still staring at it with a sort of hunger, like he’s considering licking the crumbs off it, too. His face is still pale, and in the bright, warehouse lighting of Rhiannon’s little thrift shop, his skin looks grey and veiny. Rhiannon bites back another sigh.

Instead, she says, “Want another fag?”

“God, yes,” John says. "You're my savior for that, you know? I'd start a religion after you just for those free fags."

“What a nice thought. Still, you can’t have it, or any more til you start working here,” Rhiannon says. _“And_ under my conditions, as well.”

John levels her with a glare. By Rhiannon’s calculations, he’s a little less than half of Rhiannon’s age, but his grey, mournful eyes always take Rhiannon by surprise, and not in a good way. Even with the burn of his glare, there’s some melancholy that sits firmly in his expression, stuttering like a weak flame between his irises and his pupils.

John says, “That’s playing dirty.”

“As if you wouldn't do the same. 'Sides, I don’t want you in any danger,” Rhiannon shoots back. “I cannot let such a young man just--wander about in the streets. I’ve thought it over, you know I have. I’ll take you in, and damn the consequences.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“I know that you’re wasting away,” Rhiannon says, and surprises even herself with the amount of venom in her voice. “I know that you won’t survive another winter on the streets, and hell, I’d be surprised even if you made it to summer. You’re _sick,_ you’re _underfed,_ and this isn’t romantic, it’s not a game, you’re not a fucking martyr. Take what I’m offering you, John, and know I don’t like repeating myself.”

John bites his lip. Looks Rhiannon up and down, and she almost feels naked under his pointed stare. Suddenly she becomes aware of the red spots on her forehead, the gathering crow’s feet at the edges of her eyes, her threadbare, cable-knit jumper, her wrung-out blonde hair gathered back in an uneven ponytail. He stares at her, but it’s not judgmental. The melancholy still glints in his eyes.

“If dying is what it takes to make sure I don’t hurt anyone else again,” John says, at length, “then that’s the price I pay. Thanks, Rhiannon, for the muffin.”

Then he walks out, just like that. Balls up his napkin and muffin wrapper, sticks them in the back pocket of his jeans, and heads out of the front door, hands twisting together and apart, his lip bitten down so hard that the pink skin turns as pale and grey as the rest of him.

And Rhiannon just watches him go, because there’s nothing else she can do. She’s been around enough drug addicts, enough women with bruises and broken arms from their boyfriends, to know her limits for a situation.

She can’t shake the feeling she’s sending the kid to his death, though.

Rhiannon sighs, and stares down at the counter for a while. So long that her tea goes cold, and she ends up binning the half of the muffin she hadn’t eaten.

Then she switches the OPEN sign back to closed, and heads back upstairs, trying to ignore the fact that it’s started snowing again, and the sidewalk’s already gone all patchy with ice and dirt outside her building.

***

“Let’s go over what we know about Sirius's last whereabouts,” James says, and Remus considers groaning with frustration, but manages to stop himself.

Peter, who clearly has no sort of restraint, actually does, flopping back onto his bed and burying his face in a pillow.

“Peter,” James says sweetly. Too sweetly. Remus sits up and pushes the old book of Ministry records and an old map brochure of London off his lap. He’d stopped reading it a half hour ago, anyway. “Is this boring for you, Peter?”

Peter immediately sits up again, his watery blue eyes widening. “N-no, I just--”

“Is the disappearance of one of your best friends really _that_ annoying for you? Would you perhaps like to focus on other things, while he may be _sick,_ or _dying?”_

“I… James,” Peter says weakly, but James is really hitting his stride now, pushing aside all the papers and information sheets he’d copied down about the Ministry Trace and standing up, shoulders stiff and eyes cold. 

“What would you rather be doing, Peter?” James asks softly. “Snogging Dorcas Meadowes behind the greenhouses? But you’ve already done that, haven’t you? Meadowes was so torn up about Padfoot’s disappearance, Marlene mentioned it at practice. I suppose that’s your way of comforting her, huh?”

Remus sighs, and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Prongs, leave him alone--”

“I _heard,_ ” James says, talking over Remus, “from Fenwick that you’d crowed about Sirius being gone. Couple drinks in at the Hufflepuff common room, weren’t you, Wormy. Last Friday night, and Fenwick said that _you_ said his disappearance made it easier for you with the girls, got you closer to me and Remus. Fenwick said that you said Sirius had it _coming to him.”_

Peter cowers against his headboard. James had stood up, stalking towards Peter in a way that Remus had never seen before, not even towards Snivellus. James circles closer, as if Peter’s prey, and suddenly Remus remembers how much bigger James’s Animagus form was to Peter’s, and that’s what jolts him enough to say, “Pettigrew, take a walk.”

Peter blinks, and turns his comically wide eyes to Remus. “I really didn’t mean--”

“I said, take a _walk,”_ Remus says. His hand migrates from his nose to his temple, where it rubs out useless circles. The full moon had only been last week, and the wolf had missed Padfoot’s manic energy, just as it had for months now. Remus could swear his bones ached for longer, and much more violently, when Sirius wasn’t there.

“I need to talk to James,” Remus adds, and turns to stare at Peter as well, knowing that that sort of direct eye contact from Remus always made Peter a bit anxious. 

Predictably, Peter squeaks, grabs up his bookbag and hightails it out of the dorm.

As soon as the door slams shut behind Peter, James seems to slump forward. His eyes, which had gone almost unnaturally bright underneath his glasses, grow teary, and Remus winces. He’s really not the best when it comes to tears, even though dealing with James’s awful moods became part of Remus’s job this year. Remus honestly couldn’t tell whether James's mercurial moods were a recent development, or if it had only ever been a thing that James and Sirius discussed.

“Did you really hear all that from Fenwick?” Remus asks gently.

“Yeah,” James says darkly. “He thought it’d be ‘of interest’ to me. Fenwick might be a bloody stoner, but I’ve never seen him lie to someone. Fucking hell.”

“Fuck,” Remus says, and leans back on his elbows. God, he really wants a cigarette. 

“God, I really want a cigarette,” Remus mutters to himself.

“I could go for one, myself,” James says, surprising Remus enough that he raises his eyebrows at James. James just shrugs, takes a seat on Remus’s bed, and holds out an expectant hand.

“Well, all right,” Remus says, and rifles rhrough his nightstand quickly, pulling out the tin he kept of pre-rolled fags. Remus lights one up immediately with his wand tip, puffing with ease until smoke drifts out of his nostrils. He then hands it to James, and turns to light another.

James, to his credit, only coughs a bit around his first few drags, but takes to the cigarette rather admirably.

“I suppose this is the point where I’m meant to defend Peter,” Remus says, after taking a couple more drags.

“There’s nothing to defend,” James says, and closes his eyes and he brings the fag to his lips again. He exhales, and says, “God, this is terrible. You and Sirius really do this all the time?”

“Yeah,” Remus says, shrugging. “Gets comforting, after a while. You probably shouldn’t do it all the time, with Quidditch and everything.”

“Sometimes I think of quitting,” James says, seriously enough that Remus fumbles and almost drops his cigarette.

“You _love_ Quidditch, Prongs,” Remus says, staring at him.

“It feels so trivial, nowadays,” James admits. He rubs at his jaw. “It’s just--stupid. A stupid bloody sport with stupid, nonexistent stakes.”

Remus, feeling quite out of things to say, repeats, “But you _love_ Quidditch.”

“Yeah, and Sirius is out there starving on the streets because I never fucking told him I loved him enough, apparently, and I can’t even find him properly to tell him that we’re both massive idiots,” James snaps.

Remus sighs. He breathes in, then out, more smoke drifting out of his mouth. The dorm’s getting a bit hazy. They’d have to open a window, and it’d still smell like tobacco for days afterward. Peter would complain. Remus doesn’t care much about Peter’s opinion, at this particular moment.

“You’ve figured out a lot,” Remus says eventually. “You know more about the Trace than half of the bloody Ministry, probably. You figured out that Sirius could probably still use his Animagus form when he ran away because it still counted as a long-lasting Transfiguration charm, rather than a burst of magic every time he uses it. Hell, you even figured out that he was still alive, at least until his seventeenth in November, because otherwise the Ministry would be able to record it with use of the Trace. I mean, at that point I didn’t even think he was--”

Remus cuts himself off, perhaps a bit too late. James’s face crumples.

“You thought he was that bad?” James asks quietly. “That he would…”

“I think,” Remus says, “that I may have been expecting the worst, because I always do. It’s my job, in the Marauders.”

“Not much of the Marauders are left, anymore,” James says. He reaches for the ashtray on Remus’s nightstand and stubs his cigarette out. It’d burnt down to a little nub, by the time he’d finished. Remus takes the ashtray from James and does the same, and then wraps a tight arm around James’s shoulder.

“You and me, yeah?” Remus says. “We can do it together. If Peter apologizes, he can take his place again, but until then, we can hold it together til we find Padfoot again.”

“Yeah,” James says, and then breathes out. He takes off his glasses, and rubs them with the edge of his jumper. “Could I maybe get another fag?”

“No,” Remus says, and smiles at the affronted look James shoots him. “If we’re gonna win the Quidditch Cup this year, we need our Quidditch captain in fighting form, Prongs. I already have 20 galleons down that it’s us versus Ravenclaw for the championship.”

James groans, and lays back on Remus’s bed, his head knocking into the Ministry records book in the process. Still, there’s a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth, and Remus congratulates himself inwardly. James’s smiles are in short supply nowadays--even Evans hasn’t been able to get one out of him for a few weeks now, and Remus suspects her rant last week about Slughorn’s walrus-like face was entirely meant to get him to grin.

“Never knew you cared about Quidditch, Moony,” James says, and Remus shrugs.

“I care about lots of things for you, Prongs,” Remus says, copying Sirius’s most popular catchphrase for him _(“I care about so many things and it’s just for you, Moony," he'd said, and poked at the dimple in Remus's cheek when he laughed.)_

James snorts. “Sap.”

“Oi, I’m your best mate,” Remus says, and James looks up at Remus, catching him off-guard with the solemnity of his hazel eyes.

“You really are,” James says, and Remus should feel happy about that, but all he can feel is a drifting bubble of melancholy that seems to interfere with his lungs, compressing them much too fast and quickly for his liking.

Because that should be Sirius.

 _Is_ Sirius.

Remus swallows, and reaches for the Ministry Records book, and promises himself that they’d get him back. 

No matter what.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my god i really meant to write other things but then i got tipsy off of wine and wrote this in under two hours so if literally nothing makes sense, then. that's why and and i'm sorry.
> 
> maybe im in love with rhiannon. i don't know lmao
> 
> also do u ever feel like a sirius or a remus or a james when in reality you're not even in the story. is that what fanfiction is?? will i ever stop?? will i ever stop bearing my heart at random stupid moments in the end notes of a poorly written story?? 
> 
> how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop.


	3. April 1977

Of all the things Rhiannon was expecting on a warm Monday night in mid-April, it certainly wasn’t John stumbling into her shop, his mouth bloody, hunched over himself, with one black eye and an odd, rattling sort of cough.

The door smacks open, right when Rhiannon’s ringing a middle-aged woman up for a couple shirts and a pair of trousers. John trips over his own feet, catches himself on a coat rack, and sends it crashing to the floor. He hacks up a loud, painful-sounding cough, and Rhiannon’s customer begins to say, “What in the--”

But Rhiannon cuts her off, shoving the clothes in a paper bag and handing her back what was probably too much change. “Family emergency,” Rhiannon says smoothly, and quickly ushers the woman out the door. She’s lucky that that was the only woman in the shop, and Rhiannon quickly locks the door behind her.

Rhiannon turns immediately to John, who’s sunk down to the floor, hands in his lap and eyes glazed over. “Sorry,” he says, hoarse as anything and growing paler by the minute.

Rhiannon shakes her head, half to clear her mind and half to tell him there’s no reason to apologize. Even if there is (God, she’s not seen him since late January, what the  _ hell _ was going on here?), it simply wasn’t the time.

Rhiannon bends down and checks his temperature with one hand.

He’s burning up.

Rhiannon clicks her tongue. “You’re sick, love,” she says.

“Yeah,” John says, and starts hacking out a cough into his hand. Rhiannon winces, and grabs a tissue from the box on her service counter, holding it out to him. “‘M not sure if I’m--if I’m dying. I don’t wanna die, I don’t think. 'S why I came to find you."

Rhiannon purses her lips. “Fever, bad cough, what else… I mean, you look like you were fucking mugged, love.”

“Few times, actually,” John says, and then sniffles pathetically.

Rhiannon sighs. “Are you over eighteen?”

“Huh?”

“Okay, well--could you tell the hospital you’re over eighteen, then,” Rhiannon says. “That’ll make it easier, they’ll ask fewer questions.”

“Don’ wanna go to the muggle hospital,” John mutters, and then his body is wracked with another cough. “Lily used to say they cut you open to fix you, and it sounds  _ terrible, _ Rhiannon, it really does.”

He hacks up another cough, and wipes his mouth with his shirt sleeve. She sees a smear of blood on the sleeve, and hopes to God that it was there  _ before  _ he’d wiped his mouth.

“Yes, well, we won’t go to Muggle Hospital, then,” she says. “C’mon, there’s one just around the corner, called Springfield Hospital, as well, not anything like your weirdly-named one.”

John moans on the floor, and Rhiannon sighs, and crouches next to him again.

“I’m scared,” he says.

“I know, love,” Rhiannon says, patting his shoulder. “But you won’t get any better without help, will you.”

John tosses his head back. Rhiannon watches his Adam’s Apple work up and down a few times. Then he says, “Thanks, Rhiannon. I--yeah, okay. Let's go to your muggle hospital, then.”

“Not Muggle, it's Springfield. And my friends call me Anna,” Rhiannon says gently. 

I t’s not entirely true--she’s only ever had one friend call her that, and that friend offed himself about five years ago--but John seems the type to appreciate a good nickname.

“All right,” John says. “Take me to hospital, Anna.”

“Good lad,” she says, and tugs him up with one hand--the boy’s really  _ much  _ too light, Rhiannon isn’t strong at all--and grabs her purse from behind the counter, tugging him out the door as soon as possible. Springfield was only a few streets away, but Rhiannon isn’t sure if John can walk, so she asks him as soon as she locks up her shop.

“Not sure,” he mutters, wincing and leaning back against the wall. “Can’t we just Apparate, Anna?”

“What is that, is that a cab service?” Rhiannon asks. “I don’t have the money for that kind of thing, sorry, John. We could wait for the bus…”

John groans, and says, “I dunno how we live like this,” before saying, “I can walk, I think.”

“Good,” Rhiannon says, slinging an arm across his shoulders. “I won’t let you go, okay? I gotcha, and let me know if you need to stop and rest at any point.”

John heaves out another laugh, which turns into an even hoarser, uglier cough. He sucks in a deep breath that rattles through his chest when he does. “Wish James said that,” he says, and then frowns. “But I was the one. The bad one. Yes, that’s right.”

“Okay, we’re going now, before you get any more delirious,” Rhiannon declares, her eyebrows furrowing together. She tightens her grip on John’s shoulders, and starts to guide them down the street. The end of his clavicle sticks into her hand. He’s  _ so bony. _

“You’re a good person, Anna,” John says. Well, more like slurs out. Maybe he’s on drugs as well, on top of everything else. “Maybe… maybe you can teach me how to do that. Be a good person, I mean.”

“One thing at a time, John,” Rhiannon says.

“‘Course,” John says. Then: “Thanks, Anna.”

“It’s what friends do,” Rhiannon says.

John closes his eyes, and leans his head against her shoulder. Thankfully, he continues to walk forwards. They only need to cross this intersection, and then it’s another street and then round the corner to Springfield Hospital. She rubs at his shoulder absentmindedly.

“Friends…” she hears John mutter. “Maybe you can teach me how to be a good one o’ those, too. I’ve got… a bad track record…”

“One thing at a time, John,” she says again, even though her heart breaks a bit for him.

The way he’d said that. So quietly, but with a bad kind of edge. Like he was trying to speak around a bunch of chipped teeth. Like he was hissing it out while someone broke all the bones in his hand.

She knows she doesn’t know John at all, but the level of hurt in his voice surprises her all the same.

John, for his part, just hums in response, and tries to tuck his head underneath hers, even though he was slightly taller than her. She accidentally breathes in the scent of his hair, and it’s all oil and the burnt-out smell of acid rain and concrete grit.

She presses her lips together, and picks up the pace, as fast as John and his skeletal body can allow her to.

***

Lily drops a bunch of books on the study desk next to Remus, loud enough to make a heavy, noticeable thumping sound.

Remus looks up and stares at Lily. “Are you  _ trying _ to get in trouble with Pince for mistreating the books?”

“Trying to get your attention, more like,” she says, and slides into the chair opposite from Remus, totally ignoring the books she'd just dropped on his table. Remus sighs, and closes his book of locator-based spells. He hadn’t been getting much of anywhere with it, anyway.

Lily stares deeply into Remus’s eyes. Remus frowns at her.

“I’m sure I’m very interesting to look at, Lily, but I’m a bit confused, I have to say,” he prompts.

“I’m trying to see if I can divine what sort of bullshit you and Potter have been cooking up,” Lily says.

“You don’t have the Sight, I’m afraid to say.”

“Yeah, so I’ll just have to ask the old-fashioned way." 

Remus’s jaw flexes, and he stares back down at the book he’d just shut. “There’s nothing, Lily.”

“I’d believe that, except the Marauders have  _ never  _ gone a full year without a prank, or a party, and seeing as it’s almost exam season--”

“Yeah, but things have ever-so-slightly  _ changed, _ or haven’t you noticed?” Remus snaps, and Lily’s expression falls a bit. Remus realizes, a bit belatedly--she would’ve preferred it if he and James were up to something.

Strange.

Lily sighs, and picks at one of her fingers. Her eyes firmly fixed on her hands, she asks, “Are you both still not talking to Peter, then?”

“James… took a lot of offense to the things he’d said,” Remus says. “Multiple things, if Fenwick, Darcy, Meadowes,  _ and  _ Vilicard are all to be believed.”

It was true. Peter had long since stopped trying to make up with them--the last thing Remus had heard from him was him muttering about James being a drama queen, before stalking off to meet up with some friends from Slytherin the other day. He had even quit coming to Remus’s transformations, leaving only James to corral and entertain the wolf.

“I just… I can’t believe…” Lily takes a deep breath, and then says, “Potter’s just seemed so--lost.”

“Yeah, well, his best friend disappeared and hasn’t tried to get in touch for months,” Remus says. “Tends to make anyone a bit of a downer, that.”

Lily chews on her cheek. She looks at Remus for a while, and then says, “Is it because--well, I mean, I suspected for a while, but is it… does it have to do with… what happened with him, and Snape, and Potter and you last spring?”

Remus stiffens reflexively. “What are you talking about?”

“Remus,” Lily says. “Sev--I mean, Snape, he told me during the summer holidays. I think it was a fucked-up way of him trying to--to reconnect with me. He, he told me about his suspicions, about  _ you, _ and I had them too, of course, but…”

“Lily,” Remus says softly. “What did he  _ tell  _ you.”

“That you’re a werewolf,” she says, point-blank. “That Black tried to kill him by locking him up with you during a full moon, and Potter only tried to save him to gain house points.”

Remus rears back. “That’s really not what--”

“I know,” Lily says, cutting him off. “I’ve learned that he’s a liar and an arsehole for myself, thanks. But. I do want to know how much of that was true.”

Remus sighs, and turns to look around the library. It’s already pretty cleared out--no one starts swarming the stacks until the tail end of April. Plus, Lily probably did a perimeter sweep before starting to talk to him. She’s smart like that.

Still, Remus casts a muffling charm around them, and turns back to her. “I’m a werewolf, that’s true,” he begins. 

To Lily’s credit, her expression doesn’t change at all.

“The rest is a bit more complicated,” Remus says. “I… Sirius, he tried to explain it to me a few times before summer, but I. I didn’t let him, because--I wanted to be mad, Lily, I mean, God, I was fucking… furious at him.”

“Remus,” Lily says, leaning across and grabbing onto his hand, “You didn’t know he’d go AWOL. It’s not your fault.”

Remus nods, and clears his throat. “Anyway, James says that Sirius explained it to  _ him,  _ that--well, that Snape insinuated he knew my secret. And that apparently, Snape was planning to leak the information to Slytherin families, who have a lot of sway over Hogwarts’s Board of Governors--I mean, some of them even have seats on the damned thing.

“Snape was apparently--gloating, and calling me a bunch of names, and saying that if everything went right, I’d go to Azkaban for endangering the student population. So apparently, Sirius thought he was--well, I dunno if he thought, necessarily. But he wanted to scare Snape, he wanted to show Snape how serious the situation really was. So he told Snape how to get to the Shrieking Shack--that’s where I go, for, er, for full moons.”

Remus takes a deep breath, and looks out the window. The grounds look lovely, today. Bright, clear skies, a nice wind blowing gently across the Black Lake. Sirius would’ve loved today, would’ve insisted going on long walks and tossing a frisbee back and forth, just like the dog he actually was.

Lily says gently, “But he didn’t lock Snape in.”

Remus clears his throat, and tears his eyes back from the window. “Oh, no. James… he thinks, now, that Sirius didn’t even think Snape would go through with it. For all that Sniv--Snape was nosy and a coward and an  _ absolute nuisance, _ we never for one second thought he was stupid. And Sirius came to his senses pretty fast after he told Snape, too. He ran to tell James, and James fucking hightailed it to the Shack after that. As a human, too, which was so fucking stupid of him. He pulled Snape out of there, right before he found m--found the wolf. And then Snape and Sirius got earfuls from McGonagall, Slughorn,  _ and  _ Dumbledore. I guess Sirius got what he wanted, in the end. Snape hasn’t told on me.”

“But he put you in danger,” Lily says, and Remus sighs, and rubs at his neck.

“Yeah,” Remus says. “Lily, you have to understand, I--I don’t have any control over. Over myself, in that form. I just want to kill, and spread the virus, and if I smell a human nearby, I’m--the wolf, he’s hardwired to attack. And if there aren’t any humans nearby, he, ah, attacks himself. And I smelled Snape and James, that night, and not being able to get to them… I almost tore myself apart, that night. For good.”

Lily bites her lip, and gets up from her seat. She flings herself at Remus, who accepts the hug immediately, wrapping his arms around her.

“It’s not your fault, Remus,” she says into his shoulder. It comes out muffled and very gentle.

“I know, but if something had happened--” 

“But it  _ didn’t, _ because at the end of the day, you have good friends,” Lily says.

“A good _friend_ , now,” Remus corrects. “Considering Sirius is fucking in the wind.”

Lily pulls back from him, and immediately slaps him in the shoulder. “What am I,” she says, “chopped liver?”

Remus blushes, and looks down. “Anyway,” he says, “We--James and I, we think that it wasn’t just that stupid fucking prank that made him leave. He’s always had a tense relationship with his family. We tried to ask Regulus about it, and he was very… reticent about it, as well as a fucking Death Eater, but we got the sense that something happened that made him leave for good. James blames himself, though. He was so pissed about Sirius’s prank that afterward, he said Sirius couldn’t write to him until James broke the silence first.”

Lily nods. She’s back to chewing on her cheek again. “But you both haven’t given up looking for him,” she says, nodding at the locator spells tome sitting next to Remus on the desk.

“It’s the only thing that makes James feel better, sometimes,” Remus says.

“Do you think you can find him?”

Remus takes a deep breath. “I dunno. But James and Sirius would do the same for me, so. I gotta try, at least.”

Lily nods. She twirls a piece of her hair around her finger. “Can I help?”

Remus blinks. “I mean,” he says. “If you like, of course.”

“Cool,” Lily says, and then raps on the table with her knuckles. “One last question, then.”

“Yeah, all right,” Remus says.

“You said that when James went into the Shrieking Shack tunnel, he went 'as a human',” she says, her eyes glittering dangerously. “Now, what the hell does  _ that  _ mean? Does it mean what I _think_ it means?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't question the update or how fuckin quick it is
> 
> just let it happen my dudes
> 
> oh also fuck jkr


	4. May 1977

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> richard cory's a good song, listen to it.
> 
> also james is a good friend and anyone who gets mad at him in this chapter can meet my fist with their face. Sirius did a shitty thing with the prank and his reaction wasn't great, but it was justified. Sirius running away really has more to do with his shitty mental health than anything else yikes
> 
> the fact that i relate so much to a fictional character who i've made run away at age fifteen also is probably a bad thing. but a shrink can diagnose me at a later date i got shit to do in the meantime

Sirius didn’t like staying at the Odds and Ends Thrift Shop.

It wasn’t anything to do with Anna, though--not at all. In fact, if anything, she’s the only good thing in his life now. 

She’s in her early thirties, with worry lines and a working-class accent. But her round, heart-shaped face, deep brown eyes, and propensity for telling compliments in the cruelest kind of manner, all remind him so much of Andromeda, sometimes so much it hurts. 

Andromeda’s baby, Nymphadora--she’d be three by now. Her hair had been a gumdrop pink color, and she’d called him “Seery,” and demanded that he watch her as she flew around on her little toy broomstick and clap at the appropriate moments.

He missed them so much, and even Ted Tonks as well. He’d been growing out a patchy beard the last time Sirius had seen him, and when Sirius had suggested slyly that he change it to a soul patch, Ted had snorted and offered Sirius the last few sips from his firewhiskey tumbler. It’d been around Christmas that he’d seen them last--not this year, but last year. Before. Well.

Before everything.

The Tonkses are the only people that Sirius is allowed to miss. He’d drawn the lines distinctively in his head, after everything crumbled apart. 

He’d never miss his parents--on cold nights (and there were so many, in alleyways, underneath dumpsters, in the bushes in parks), his skin still tingled and swelled like it was still aching from the Cruciatus. 

His brother, though--that was a closed door for his own sake. The bone-deep anger there, the hurt, the  _ emptiness _ like someone had drunk all the marrow out of his bones… it would’ve torn him apart if he’d allowed it to, especially in the hours and days and weeks after he’d finally escaped Grimmauld.

He wasn’t allowed to miss the Marauders because that was too close to self-pity, which Sirius figured was only a step or two away from self-importance. Sirius didn’t allow himself to think of Remus, in particular, at all because sometimes even the moon gave Sirius this hollowed-out, dried-up feeling in his chest that was probably couched in some sort of selfishness.

James had screamed at him about that exact personality flaw, after punching Sirius in the face and dragging him by his ear up to their dorm room so James could scream and rage at him some more. 

_ “You’re a fucking arse,”  _ James had hissed, as Sirius had sat on the foot of his bed and stared at his shoes.  _ “You’re a self-important dickhead who claims to care about his friends and then tries to  _ kill  _ them. To make them murderers. You wanted to be better than your family? Too bad, you’re showing your true fucking colors right now. You’re not a friend at all, Black--not to me, and  _ certainly  _ not to Remus. I don’t want to look at you, I don’t even want to talk to you--don’t you dare, not until I can deal with this. Just. Fuck off for now, Black.” _

Sirius hears him in his head all the time, since then. Time has robbed James of his deep, usually mellow voice, and even his peculiar patterns of speech, like mumbling out the very ends of his phrases and emphasizing his ‘m’s. Instead, Sirius just hears the soundless hiss of James’s last great speech to him, and swears up and down he’ll never repeat anything like the Prank ever again to himself as often as possible.

Sirius had tried to avoid even engaging with anyone after early July when he'd punched a hole in his window, knuckles wrapped around an old t-shirt, and dropped down a whole storey, landing too hard on his knees and probably fracturing one of them (he still has a limp in his left leg). He’d left then, run away without anything, even his wand, just changing form into a huge black dog who ran straight out of London after about three days.

He’d ended up in Chelmsford, and figured that was as good a place as any to hide out from everyone. He’d already sent a letter to James with a bare-bones explanation, so there wasn’t the worry of having to get in contact with anyone anymore, and Hogwarts would know not to expect him come fall. Andromeda would be fine with her family. All that was left for Sirius was trying to get by, day-to-day.

And he had, sort of. A bit. Mainly as Padfoot, but after he’d bummed a cigarette of Anna as a birthday treat for himself (he’d smelled her smoking in the alleyway below her flat, sometimes, and knew she smoked Embassy, his favorite Muggle brand), he’d hung around as himself on certain days. 

He’d changed out his nice cotton-blend undershirt and trousers that he’d escaped with for some clothes from a donation bin in a fit of paranoia, and when he caught a glimpse of himself in a storefront window, he’d realized how ragged and worn down he was getting. Selfishly, he’d liked it--the beauty he’d always had had gotten stripped away, leaving behind what he’d always felt was on the inside of him.

He’d known that Anna had been concerned about him--he’d even stayed away a couple months after her insistent job offer, both out of some strange sort of logic that she’d be more in danger of an attack from the Dark Lord if he was there (though no one knew where he was, and more likely didn’t care), and also the knowledge that staying with her would be self-serving. She’d get nothing out of the deal, and he’d get a roof over his head, food to eat, and pocket change. That wasn’t fair at all, and he’d tried very hard to not bother anyone since the fucking Prank.

But then he’d gotten pneumonia. 

That’s what the Muggle doctors called it. Sirius hadn’t ever heard of it before, but apparently lots of Muggles get it, especially if they’re not eating right and staying all night out in the cold--or at least that’s how the doctor put it, and how Anna had yelled at him later about it. 

“I mean really, John, what the hell else did you expect,” she’d snapped, and Sirius had considered once more giving her his real name. It felt wrong, for her to be the only person he talked to anymore, and her not even know his given name. 

But it felt wrong somehow--as if Sirius Black wasn’t a real person anymore, not any realer than John was, at least. So Sirius had left it, and instead said, “I don’t know, Rhiannon.”

“You’re coming back with me,” Anna had decided, right there and then, standing in his hospital room with a hand clutched in her ponytail. 

“And for God’s sake, I told you to call me Anna. It’s easier, and you might as well if you’re going to be living with me--and I don’t want to  _ hear  _ it, if you try and run away from me again I will shoot you down and drag you right back in. You need someone to look after you, especially since you’ve got bruised ribs and a black eye on top of a fucking lung infection. Jesus  _ Christ, _ John.”

“I didn’t mean--”

“You never do,” Anna had said, and it was so reminiscent of James’s tone, almost a year ago back in the dorm, that Sirius had flinched. Anna had bit her lip, then, and said more gently, “I’m worried about you, love. Let me do this. It’s not for you, it’s for me.”

So that’s what convinced Sirius to come and live at Odds and Ends Thrift Shop.

Anna was careful not to pamper him too much--she’d given him a cot in the backroom, just like she’d said, and a fleece blanket and pillow. After he’d taken his antibiotics (little pills that were tasteless and swallowed down with water, and much more palatable than Pomfrey’s potions, surprisingly) and could walk around on his feet, Anna had taught him how to man the cash register and make change. After a few false starts--for all his O’s in Muggle Studies, pound notes were still really very confusing--Sirius had gotten the hang of it. Anna made him eat dinner with her every night, and she always checked he was in the shop before she went to bed.

It was nice, and Sirius couldn’t help but feel terribly guilty.

Anna shouldn’t be giving up her home, her business, her  _ food  _ to someone like Sirius. Someone who’d been raised to hate Anna, and who’d very nearly taken the Dark Mark (if only to ward off another Cruciatus or Imperius Curse, but the fact still remained). Someone who was so rude to his friends, who couldn’t respect their wishes or their boundaries, who was needy and took too much and gave far too little.

Sirius spends the month of May recovering from pneumonia and a couple different muggings, counting change as a cashier, and staring up at the ceiling on sleepless nights wondering what James would say, and how disappointed he’d be that Sirius really hadn’t changed at all.

***

Remus and Lily put the search for Sirius on the back burner around exam time.

James understands why--it’s not like they’ve found really anything, even with Lily joining the search efforts (and damn, wasn’t  _ that  _ a curveball, when Remus had shown up, flushed-face, saying “Lily wants to help with Sirius and also I might’ve let slip that I’m a werewolf and you’re an illegal Animagus, so, er, sorry about that,”) but it still feels wrong.

Lily’s been invaluable for research and mapping out the greater London area, but other than that, the three of them are hitting dead ends. Even James knows it, at this point, but he refuses to admit it. He  _ can’t  _ admit it. Lily had had to talk him down from some sort of fit the other day--he’d felt like he couldn’t breathe, staring at all the places in London where Sirius probably wasn’t, and she’d had to help him cup his hands around his face, getting him to feel his own breath pushing in and out of his lungs before he believed he was actually all right, and not cursed with some sort of strangling spell.

“Panic attack,” Lily had said, oddly gentle, with a hand even rubbing at his neck, but James didn’t believe that. He was probably just pushing too hard, and the stress had caught up with him somehow, but it wasn’t a panic attack. James didn’t get panic attacks.

And anyway, James knows that he’s been insufferable about the whole thing--hell, Peter had taken to calling him a slave driver before their friendship fell apart. Even Remus, who James knows is just as dedicated as himself, has had to pull books and notes away from James, hiding them in a locked chest that was impervious to magical charms until he was absolutely sure that James had gotten at least four or five hours of sleep.

But it’s his fault Sirius had run away, and so that makes it  _ his  _ mistake to correct.

Because he’d known how bad it was at home for Sirius. He’d known how much worse it had gotten in fifth year, even--the emergency calls on their compact mirrors during Christmas had gotten downright frightening, until eventually Sirius had used the Floo at Grimmauld and spent the holiday with Andromeda. He’d still come back to school with a silvery scar that slashed across his shoulder and down his back, visible when he wore a shirt with an open collar, but not particularly noticeable if you weren't looking for it.

It was magical in nature--must’ve been, for it not to heal properly, and he’d refused to tell even James how he’d gotten it, or who’d given it to him.

There’d only been one time Sirius had been truly honest about what it was like at home, for him. It’d been late at night, early April of their fifth year--weeks before the whole meltdown that happened with Snape and the Whomping Willow and Remus. James had had trouble sleeping that particular night. The Tower got really hot during springtime, being one of the highest areas around the castle. 

James had woken up thirsty, sweaty, and feeling generally wrung out by the heat. He’d swallowed some water directly from the tap in the bathroom, and as he’d wandered back to his bed, he’d stepped on a particularly creaky floorboard.

Sirius’s head had poked out of his bed curtains at the sound, frowning in the darkness until his pale grey eyes, nearly glowing in the low dusk light, found James’s. Then he’d whispered, “Hey.”

“What are you doing up?” James had whispered back, and Sirius had gestured for James to climb into his bed.

As soon as James had, Sirius had cast a silencing charm. James had looked around, and saw that Sirius hadn’t even climbed under his bed covers yet. His wand had been lit up with a dim Lumos charm, and an old issue of James’s favorite Quidditch magazine had been lying face-down on Sirius’s pillow. James had sat cross-legged on the left side of the bed and watched as Sirius had resettled himself, grabbing his wand and recasting Lumos silently.

Sirius had had these large, dark purple shadows underneath his eyes--worse than usual, and James had known how shit Sirius was at sleeping most of the time. He always seemed to either get no sleep, or sleep all day and night. But then again, an all-or-nothing approach was usually how Sirius tackled everything in life.

“Everything all right?” James had asked him, folding his knees up to his chest.

“Not really,” Sirius had said, pushing his hair into his face, and then brushing it away again. “It always seems to go by so fast. The school year, I mean.”

“Yeah,” James had said. “God, we’ve got the Quidditch semi-finals coming up soon, and if we don’t beat Ravenclaw out--”

“Do you ever think about anything that isn’t Quidditch or Evans?” Sirius had asked, but there’d been a slight quirk to his lips that James couldn’t help mimicking.

“Well, that depends,” James had said. “Do you ever think of anything that isn’t Moony or pranking Slytherins?”

He’d been teasing--of course he’d been teasing--but Sirius’s smile had slightly dropped at that. 

“I…” he’d taken a deep breath, and then swallowed.

“You know if you told Moony, he wouldn’t care. He may even care the same about you,” James had said, unfurling one of his legs to poke at Sirius’s shin with his socked foot.

“Yeah, I just…” Sirius had bitten down on his lip, and then rolled up his left sleeve. The pale skin of his forearm seemed to shimmer in the low light, bare and perfect save a dark freckle or two.

“My parents want me to take the Dark Mark,” Sirius had said then, all on an exhale. “They’d tried to… persuade… me to do it over Christmas. But my mum said if I didn’t do it this summer, then I’d--I’d live to regret it.”

“Pads,” James had whispered, feeling cold all of a sudden, despite the intense heat of the room.

“Moony doesn’t deserve someone like me,” Sirius had said then, looking up at James. It had been the first time since first year that James had ever seen him tear up. It made his grey eyes look nearly translucent in the light, and James had immediately surged forward, wrapping Sirius up in a bear hug.

“I’d been tempted, Jamie,” Sirius had muttered into James’s shoulder, and he’d just shaken his head, gripping at Sirius tighter. “I thought--for a second I was--maybe they’d forgive me for everything. And Reg, he’s. He’s already  _ taken  _ it, and he’s fifteen, and someone needs to protect him… I was so caught up in that, I didn’t even think about the war for a minute.”

“But you didn’t,” James had consoled, and hadn’t said much else, just hugged Sirius tight and promised him it was all right, because Sirius  _ hadn’t  _ taken the Dark Mark, would never take the Dark Mark.

In retrospect, there was so much else James should’ve said, then. Because Sirius had been tearing apart at the seams--that much was evident. Even if that night hadn’t confirmed it for Sirius, it should’ve been the wolfish way Sirius had stared at the Slytherins, at his own best friend. How deeply overprotective Sirius had gotten over Moony in particular, and how Sirius’s grades had started slipping as he skivved off lessons to smoke and listen to Simon & Garfunkel records on repeat (he’d swear his favorite artist was David Bowie, but when things really started going wrong, Sirius would move the needle back again and again so he could listen to “Richard Cory” off  _ Sounds of Silence). _

James had even wanted to say some things to Sirius, that night--he’d wanted to promise a home with himself and his parents, he’d wanted to say ‘Come back with me, not them,’ and he’d even wanted to say, ‘You know I’ll love you no matter what, right?’

But he hadn’t, because he’d thought the time wasn’t right. He’d thought that he would have time before school ended to say all of those things, and that that would be a better time for Sirius anyway, especially when he wasn’t so emotional and volatile.

And then the Prank happened, and James had forgotten to say any of those things at all.

And that’s on him.

And that’s  _ why  _ he’s got to find Sirius, and apologize and beg forgiveness for being a shitty fucking friend.

James spends the month of May ignoring exams in favor of going over old maps, location charms, being forced to sleep by Remus, and being reminded how to do very simple things, like eat and drink and breathe by Lily Evans. 

He spends the month of May regretting everything he’d said to Sirius to make him run away, and all of the things he hadn’t said to make Sirius believe he had to stay away.


	5. June 1977

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> why have a deus ex machina when u have minerva mcgonagall, amiright folks

Anna had insisted that Sirius get new clothes.

They’d argued a bit over it, actually--Sirius agreed with her, of course, but he didn’t want her to pay for it. He figured that she paid him enough, especially since he wasn’t paying for lodging or even his own food half the time, so it was only fair that he pay for his own clothes.

Anna had shot back that he still had much less than a hundred pounds to his name, so he’d better shut up and let her take care of it.

Eventually, they’d reached a sort of unsteady compromise, where they split the cost right down the middle. Neither of them were particularly happy about the arrangement, but one Saturday in early June they headed to a thrift shop across town (Sirius absolutely refused to use any of the stock in Odds and Ends, even though Anna had said over and over again that she wouldn’t have minded). They picked up a couple of plain tees, trousers, and even a denim jacket that was torn a bit in the shoulder, so they’d gotten half price on it. Anna even snuck in a pair of black Converse shoes, barely used, which Sirius liked too much to actually turn down.

Sirius had been really pleased with the clothes, honestly.  But now, as he stares at himself in the mirror, he feels like something’s off. 

He’s thoroughly kitted out in Muggle gear, the way that he’s always wanted but has never gotten to experience, but he still looks wrong. He runs a hand through his hair, and that’s when he figures it out--he looks too much like a pureblood, still. He looks too much like Sirius Black.

So he grabs a pair of scissors from the drawer of office supplies that Anna keeps up front, and heads up the steps that led to Anna’s flat. When she answers the door, he just holds out the scissors to her and asks, “Do you know how to cut hair?”

“Women’s,” Anna says. “Not men’s.”

“I just want it shorter,” Sirius says. “Like, above my ears, shorter.”

Anna sighs, and checks her watch. “Close up the shop for an hour or so,” she says. “It’ll take that long, if you don’t want me completely fucking it all up.”

They end up cutting his hair over Anna’s kitchen sink. She puts on a David Bowie record, and they both nearly nick themselves on the scissors more than once as they sing along and get caught up in the music. During “It Ain’t Easy,” Anna gives up completely on cutting his hair, instead lip-syncing along to the chorus perfectly as Sirius taps out a drum solo against the countertop.

Eventually, though, Anna sets down the scissors and retrieves a handheld mirror from her bedroom. She hands it to Sirius, and says, “Tell me how you feel, love. If it’s wretched, we can always go to a real hairdresser to fix it up.”

Sirius takes the mirror and looks into it. He’s surprised by what he sees--but in a good way.

His hair is feathery, falling over itself on his forehead and gently scooping down to just above his ears on the sides. It makes his still-haggard, thin face look fuller. Sirius smiles despite himself, and pushes a hand through his hair, marveling at the way it fell back into place easily.

“You’re better at this than you think you are,” Sirius says.

“You’re too kind, John,” Anna says. Her back is turned to him, and she’s rummaging through her pantry to grab a broom and dustpan so she can sweep up the scraps of Sirius’s hair.

Sirius bites his lip and watches her. Her hair’s tied back in a ponytail, like always, and she’s wearing a pair of light blue sweats and a too-big t-shirt. He’s struck again by how much they don’t really know each other, and how much he’d trusted her to do something like this, anyway.

“My name’s Sirius, by the way,” he blurts out.

Anna stiffens, and turns to face him. She’s got a white-knuckled grip on her broom, and she frowns at him, brushing a stray piece of hair behind her ear. “Like the adjective? Are you having me on?”

“No,” Sirius says, shaking his head. “Like the star.”

Anna stares at him blankly.

“Brightest star in the sky?” He tries again. “Commonly known as the Dog Star, or Alpha Canis Major?”

“Weird,” Anna says. The corner of her mouth is twitching up into a smile.

“Yeah, well,” Sirius says, ruffling a hand through his hair. “My friends call me John, anyway.”

“I bet they do,” Anna says, and pats him on the shoulder as she passes him and starts to sweep up the hair on her linoleum floor. “Be a dear and make us some tea, then, will you?”

“‘Course,” Sirius says, and immediately starts filling the kettle.

Maybe in the past he’d be caught off-guard, or even shocked, by such a blasé response. 

But this is Anna, and she's one of the best people Sirius has ever known. She's blunt, and odd, and says she hates smoking while her mouth is closed around a cigarette--but she's Anna.

As he’s placing the kettle on the stove, Anna asks, “Will I ever get a surname from you?”

Sirius shrugs. He knows, without looking at her, that she hasn’t looked up from sweeping. She’s pretending not to care. Sirius likes that she puts that kind of effort in, just to make him feel more comfortable.

“It’s not important,” Sirius says, and he’s glad to learn that he means that, with every inch of his being. “It doesn’t matter at all, actually. Not anymore.”

***

It's in the dregs of sixth year that James figures out how to find Sirius.

Well, ‘figures out’ is a strong way to put it. The more accurate description is that McGonagall strongly hints to him about it until he finally cottons on.

The last few exam days don’t involve any classes that James takes--they were scheduled for first-year DADA, third-year Transfiguration and Potions, and Arithmancy. As such, Remus and Lily are still in the midst of exam prep, and James is left to his own devices.

He supposes, in years past, that that might’ve meant trouble. If this was fourth year, or hell, even fifth year, James would be brimming with prank ideas, researching hexes, or even throwing wadded-up paper balls at Remus while he studied until he either gave up or tackled James for distracting him.

But today, James takes a walk out to the Black Lake, and sits for a while, legs dangling off the edge of the pier. He skirts past the Forbidden Forest on the way back, hugging the tree line until he reaches Hagrid’s cottage, and waves to the groundskeeper as he takes the cobblestone path back up to the castle.

At the doors to Hogwarts, Regulus Black is leaning against one of the stone pillars, chatting with his ferrety-looking friend, Crouch. James feels Regulus’s sharp, cold grey eyes watch him as he passes into the castle, but James doesn’t look at him. 

(But even without looking, James is suddenly reminded of being slammed against a corridor wall, all the way back in September. He remembers Regulus’s cold, stony glare, and the way he’d bitten out, “Where  _ is  _ he?”

And James had babbled out, “I don’t know. I really don’t know. I wish I knew--I thought maybe you’d know. I don’t understand it. I don’t get how he could just go  _ missing  _ like that--”

And Regulus had pulled away from James immediately, fists unbunching from James’s shirt. He’d said, “Let me know. If you find him. Please.”

And James had said quietly, looking at the lines of Regulus’s face and how closely they resembled Sirius’s face: “I will.”

“Good. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”

And that had been that. The last time either of them had spoken to each other. But James could feel Regulus’s eyes on him, sometimes. 

Just like now.)

So James doesn’t look at Regulus, and instead walks into the castle, idly wondering whether he should hit up the seventh-year Hufflepuff with an eyebrow piercing for some weed and head for the Hogsmeade tunnel, when suddenly a black-haired, stern-faced woman is right in front of him, lips drawn tightly together.

James draws back. “Professor? I haven’t done anything, I swear--”

Oddly enough, McGonagall’s mouth twitches slightly downward at that. “I know,” she says briskly. “My third-years finished up their exams a couple of minutes ago. I was actually looking for you--I’d like you to come to my office for a chat, and some tea.”   
  


James blinks. He’s never been invited to McGonagall’s office for  _ tea.  _ He’s been in several times--for getting reamed out for turning Slytherin’s robes red and gold, and for sneaking out at midnight to fly around the Quidditch pitch, and for hexing Snape, and for sneaking firewhiskey into the castle, and for--

Well. He’s been in McGonagall’s office lots of times. But never for tea. Moony’s done it a couple times, but. He’s  _ Moony. _

“Potter?”

“Ah. Yes. Sure,” James stammers out.

“Excellent,” McGonagall says, and with a crisp heel turn, she heads up the grand staircase outside the Great Hall. James watches her for a moment, before he realizes he’s meant to  _ follow. _

So he does, blinking a bit dazedly. McGonagall is swift and firm with everything she does, and walking, as it turns out, is no different--James has to hurry a few times to keep up with her, and before he knows it, they’re right outside the door to her office.

She opens the door and beckons him in. James obediently enters, and sits in the cushioned chair that sat opposite her desk. 

The room always smells faintly like peppermint and honey, and it’s primarily made of dark wood, what with McGonagall’s ancient, polished desk, ornate bookshelves, and tea cabinet. Thick red curtains hang over the windows, and a plush carpet is thrown over the majority of the office. A brass gramophone sits in one corner of the office, tucked away next to a bonsai tree, and McGonagall’s porcelain, white-and-blue tea set is on proud display, arranged carefully on a silver-plated tray next to a plain aluminum kettle.

As McGonagall walks into her office, she flicks her wand at the kettle, which begins to boil. She rummages through her tea cabinet and picks out a canister of black, spicy tea, which she dishes into her tea infuser deftly. Once the kettle begins to whistle, she pours the water into her teapot, and dunks in the tea infuser.

She carries the tea tray over to her desk, and sets it down in front of James. Then she settles into her desk chair, and eyes James. “You take it black, yes?”

“Yeah,” James says.

“Good choice,” she says, and opens a desk drawer. She pulls out a tin of tea biscuits and a couple of paper napkins, and hands a few biscuits over to James.

“Now,” she says, “I’d like to talk to you about Mr. Black.”

James breathes in sharply, but nods anyway. “I figured.”

She shifts her jaw back and forth. Her eyes are dark and placed into sharp relief by her round spectacles. She leans forward, placing an elbow on her desk, and says, “How have you been trying to find him?”

“I looked into the Trace, first,” James says, feeling oddly like he's reciting a research project presentation. “But it only works if an underage wizard uses magic outside of designated areas, or if their magical signature is--well, if the wizard is dead. But I thought maybe it could be used as a locator, but--”

“That doesn’t work unless the underage wizard uses magic,” McGonagall confirms, nodding. “It’s a privacy issue. It’s why location charms are usually considered dark magic nowadays, especially if it’s cast on a non-consenting party.”

“Yeah, I looked into that, next.”

McGonagall sighs, and checks her watch. Then she pours tea into two teacups, pushing one towards James. It's pretty, with a simple, elegant blue pattern scrawled across the bottom of the cup. James obediently takes a sip of tea, and finds that he really likes the flavor. It's sharp, and sort of tastes of cloves.

“A wizard disappearing from the wizarding world often means that they’ve integrated into Muggle society,” McGonagall says, sipping at her own cup, “Considering how small our world is. Especially someone so--high-profile, as Mr. Black. The faculty are quite agreed that he’s intentionally distanced himself from any magical area in England, which makes locating him quite difficult.”

“You’ve been looking for him too?” 

McGonagall gives him a bit of a withering look. “He was my student, Mr. Potter,” she says. “And I care about my students. Especially if they were in such a precarious position as Mr. Black was.”

James swallows, and tears off a bit of his biscuit. Instead of eating it, he crushes it to bits in the palm of his hand. Without looking up, James says, “If Dumbledore can’t find him--if you can’t find him--then. Is it… hopeless, to try?”

“Mr. Potter,” McGonagall says sharply, and James looks up. She’s staring at him, frowning deeply. “I have never known you to give up on anything that you care deeply about. Or have you forgotten about what you’ve done for Mr. Lupin?”

James’s heart stops. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“Butter would absolutely melt in your mouth, Mr. Potter, so please stop pretending it wouldn’t,” McGonagall says. “You are tenacious, and one of the brightest students I’ve taught, and your proclivity for bending and breaking the rules has caused me a great deal of trouble over the past six years. That is precisely why you’ll be able to find Mr. Black. I have full faith in you.”

“I appreciate it,” James says, his mouth dry and heart still refusing to beat, “but I’ve not been able to find--anything, Professor. If he doesn’t want to be found, I’m not sure I can change that.”

McGonagall sighs, and sits back in her chair. “Are you part of the Slug Club, Mr. Potter?” 

James blinks at the sudden subject change. “Ah--no. But Lily is, so she’d know better than me, if you’re interested in talking about that, Professor.”

She just shrugs, and takes another sip of her tea. “I find Professor Slughorn a bit draining, to be honest,” she says, a smile playing at the corner of her lips. “But he’s been talking to me about brewing a potion that I find a bit fascinating. It's taken him a couple months, but if you have time before you leave, you should check it out.”

“Professor?” James asks, feeling absolutely out of sorts by now.

“I’m sure you’ll find Mr. Black,” she says, ricocheting right back to her original subject as if this digression meant nothing at all. “You’ve always been clever, and extraordinarily lucky, I would say.”

“I’m not sure about lucky,” James says, frowning.

“I am,” McGonagall says, and looks at him, an odd sort of gleam in her eye.

And then, suddenly, James  _ gets it. _ His eyes widen, and she indulges him with a small smile, before pushing her biscuit tin forward again.

“Have another, Mr. Potter,” she says. “You deserve it.”


	6. July 1977, Part I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeet the story's changing
> 
> what to? that's a great question. I'll let you know when I do.
> 
> also I know there's a comment about using the homonculous charm to locate Sirius, and I just wanted to say that I legit wrote that description of why they couldn't use it before I even read the comment, lmao. I thought it would seem like a plot hole otherwise, and I figured I'd talk about it to get ahead of the curve, but good job on noticing that!! Sorry if it sounds like I was targeting u in that section, I promise we just have parallel lines of thought lol

On the third of July, Sirius’s past catches up to him.

It’s sort of tragic, really--it had been turning out to be a good day, otherwise. It was a Sunday, which meant coffee and pasty day. Anna opened the shop later on Sundays, and she always picked up the cups of strong black coffee from Mr. Parker’s bakery, along with a box filled to the brim with his day-old, still-flaky pasties. The two of them would eat, drink and talk at her kitchen table, before heading back down to the shop to officially open.

Sirius is much more partial to tea, but Mr. Parker’s coffee was strong, black, and just the right side of bitter, and left him feeling buzzed and alert. It also seems to smooth out Anna when she drinks it--her smile grows wider, and she even cracks a joke or two; usually some sort of awful pun, but always enough to make Sirius choke on his coffee as he laughs.

This particular Sunday, when Sirius’s life falls apart yet again--it had been especially fun, that morning. Because Anna had told some sort of joke that ended with, ‘I’m so glad my mother’s dead, so I  _ never  _ have to tell her about it,’ and Sirius had responded wryly with, ‘My mum would be proud of you, honestly, if you told her about it--and that’s not a good thing,’ and Anna had looked at him, beamed, and said, “I’m really glad you’re here, love.”

Sirius had bitten at his lip, and said, “You know, I am, too.”

“Good,” Anna had said, and reached out for him, pulling him into a one-armed hug that was loose, but nevertheless very comforting. Sirius had sucked in a deep breath, but relaxed into it. Anna never wore perfume, but she had smelled floral from the mixture they used to mop the shop early in the morning, and her blonde hair had tickled at Sirius’s nose.

Anna had squeezed at Sirius’s back, and said, “I’m so glad you don’t look so skeletal anymore--it was sort of freaking out the customers, and I have so few as it is,” and Sirius had laughed. It’s true--with Anna’s dogged attempts to feed him, as well as Sirius’s own, brand-new pocket money that let him buy snacks sometimes, he’s no longer waif-like. 

He’s still much slimmer than he’d ever been at Hogwarts, with all of his Quidditch muscle evaporated and his skin sticking much closer to his bones than they had before, but it looks purposeful now. He likes it better. It means he takes up less space in a room.

So that had been their morning, and the easy, caring atmosphere between the two of them has followed all the way to the early afternoon, when Anna, in a fit of whimsy, says, “How about I pop out to that open-air market about two streets away? I can pick us up some lunch, while you mind the shop, and when I get back we can close up for lunch hour and head to the park.”

“Sounds great,” Sirius says, already digging into the pocket of his trousers to hand her a fiver, but she just waves him off.

“You already paid for breakfast,” he points out.

“Yeah, but if you let me take care of lunch, then you can save some of your pocket money and we can go to that record shop you love so much on our way back from the park--the one with a bargain bin, and that cashier with the curly hair and lip scar that you think is pretty,” Anna says, grinning at him.

Sirius sighs, but only because the bribery works so well on him. “You’re evil.”

“And paying for lunch,” she says, and gives him a two-fingered salute as she exits the shop.

Sirius relaxes against the cashier counter, elbows pressing into the wooden top. ABBA’s playing from the ancient turntable that Anna kept behind the till, and although Sirius doesn’t want to admit it, he finds it catchy. He even starts humming along as he sweeps up some loose dirt near the entrance, and as he rings up a few customers purchasing clothes and scratched-up furniture.

Sirius is still humming along to the record, actually, when Anna comes back about twenty minutes later. But he stops soon after she enters the shop--she’s carrying a paper bag in her hands, and Sirius can smell the sandwiches she’d picked up, bacon grease and toasted bread wafting through the air. She’d also picked up some apples, and peaches, and she's balancing the cartons of both in her arms.

But Anna’s return, or her purchases, aren’t why Sirius stops humming. Instead, it’s the look on her face. Squinted eyes, pulled-together eyebrows, and a pinched look to her mouth that Sirius has only seen once before--and that’s when he was in hospital.

“What’s happened?” Sirius asks, immediately reaching for her bag and the cartons. She lets him take them, and bites at her cheek as he sets it all on the counter.

“I… ran into some people,” she says. “Er. Teenagers.”

“Not trying to adopt any more, are you?” Sirius jokes, even though his heart has begun to stutter oddly in his chest.

“Not quite,” Anna says, and presses out a breath of air from her lungs that could be mistaken for a chuckle. “No, er--they looked a bit lost, and were very polite. They'd been asking Sal about a friend they’d lost.”

“Oh,” Sirius says.

Anna looks him up and down. She says, very quietly, “They, er. They said their friend’s name was Sirius Black. And--well, they described you pretty well, I’d say, even if there were more than one person on the planet named ‘Sirius.’”

Sirius swallows against a suddenly dry mouth and throat. Anna’s pinched mouth hasn’t gone away, and she’s rubbing at her knuckles pretty hard with her thumb, pressing white spots into the back of her hand.

“Are they here?” he hears himself ask.

“Outside,” Anna says. “Just around the corner. I couldn’t--I didn’t want to… just leave it, in case… but I said they couldn’t come in. Not unless you gave the okay. Er, they said their names were James Potter, Remus Lupin, and Lily Evans.”

Sirius, despite himself, chokes out a laugh. “Evans? That’s a surprise.”

“You’ve gone pale, love,” Anna says gently, and steps closer to Sirius. Sirius presses his lips together, and leans away from her. 

The ABBA record rolls to a stop behind him. It needs to be flipped to the B side, but Sirius doesn’t move. 

Anna reaches out a hand, thinks better of it, and lets it drop down to her side. “I can tell them to go. I can say it’s all a mistake, but. You just seemed so sure no one would’ve been looking for you, and. They seem to care a lot about how you’re doing. The boy with the glasses--James--he’s been asking me nothing but questions about you.”

Sirius scrubs a hand over his face. “I thought…”

He doesn’t know what he thought, actually--in his twisted-up mind, he’d assumed they’d leave well enough alone. James hadn’t wanted him to speak to him, James had said no contact, and Sirius had left it, and he’d figured that would be it. In doing so, he’d forgotten years of friendship--he’d forgotten how determined James could be, and how dedicated he was. 

Did he consider Sirius’s note a challenge? Did he find Sirius just for the hell of it? And what about Remus? 

Remus should’ve been fine without Sirius. Better, even. It’s what kept Sirius going sometimes, especially in the months he hadn’t seen Anna. The idea that despite everything, he’d done one thing right by Remus.

Evans was a complete shock, too. She’d never cared about him. She’d been right to feel that way, too. Only one with common sense, it seems, so why is  _ she  _ here?

“Sirius, love,” Anna says again, just as gentle and quiet.

“Er,” Sirius says intelligently.

“I’m sorry to spring this on you,” she says, moving forward again. Sirius doesn’t stop her, this time, and he lets her put a hand on his shoulder. “But I can’t keep them waiting out there forever. Just… give me something to work with, here.”

“Yeah,” Sirius says, and sticks his hands in his pockets, and then takes them out again. He tucks a piece of hair behind his ear, and then tugs at his earlobe. “Er, I just. I really thought they’d leave it alone. They should’ve, I don’t know how they--how they even  _ found  _ me.”

“I can tell them to come back,” Anna offers.

“No, if they--if they got this far,” Sirius says, swallowing hard again, “then they must have something to say, right? They wouldn’t--they wouldn’t come all the way out here for nothing. So. Better to talk to them now. Right? That’s the correct move?”

“It’s whatever you want,” Anna says, watching him carefully.

“Yeah, all right,” Sirius says, and nods jerkily. He tugs at the hem of his shirt, and bites down on his lip. “Uh. Send them in.”

“You’re sure?”

“Not really,” Sirius admits. “But. I owe them that.”

“Okay,” Anna says, and hugs him tight for a couple of moments, before moving away. “I’ll get them, then.”

***

Remus, if he was being honest with himself, had given up on the hope of ever finding Sirius, before James came to him and Lily with the daft Felix Felicis plan.

This, of course, was much different from giving up on searching for him. Remus had been quite certain that he’d spend the rest of his life searching for Sirius, if that was what it took--but it would feel like a meaningless task, something that he had to do but would be useless and fruitless, even as he kept looking.

In the last few days of June, Remus remembers that he and Lily had been discussing the homonculous charm as a possible way to find Sirius, when James had burst into the common room from his talk with McGonagall. Lily had been impressed by the Marauder’s Map (really impressed, and irked--her actual words had been, “this is  _ genius _ -level magic, and you all used it for pranks and a laugh?!”), and suggested that it could be a way to find Sirius. “If we map out possible locations where he could be, and cast it--”

“But we don’t know where he  _ is, _ ” Remus had pointed out, idly flipping through a text about the Animagus registry. 

He’d already gone through the homonculous idea with James, but he wasn’t about to tell Lily that. Also, she may have some insight that he and James had overlooked. “Plus you have to be in the area to cast the charm originally. We’d have to map out the places, visit them, and then cast it. It was hard enough doing it by floor, here in the castle. If we tried doing it to whole city  _ blocks… _ ”

“We’d exhaust our magical cores before we ever had a hope of finding him,” Lily had said, and leaned back on the sofa, her hair spilling out behind her. “Damn.”

“But there might be a way to circumnavigate that?” Remus had suggested tentatively, even though he doubted it.

Lily had shaken her head, though. “That’d take ages to figure out, if it could be done at all.”

“And besides, he’s smart enough to avoid anywhere we’d guess he’d go,” Remus had said, hand scraping down the spine of his book. He had felt his mouth twitch downward in that familiar, stomach-clenching feeling of melancholy. “It’d take a lucky guess to even pinpoint what city he’s in, never mind where he’s living. So unless we just start putting up posters, or get involved in dark magic… I dunno. Sometimes it feels… well, I don’t know, but sometimes I…”

Remus didn’t allow himself to finish the thought, but he knows Lily could follow him. Her eyes had gone from a pale green to a darker, forest color. She’d chewed at her lip, opened her mouth to say something--and then someone said, from behind them, “Did someone mention a lucky guess?”

Remus had blinked, and looked up behind Lily to see James.

But he was different--much different. Just that morning, he’d been quiet, withdrawn, mentioning a walk around the grounds when Remus and Lily had gone to the library for an Arithmancy study session. His voice had been low, his hands had been shoved in his pockets, and that had been the norm for James for the past couple of months.

In the common room, though, he had seemed changed. He’d been bouncing on the balls of his feet, a hand scrubbing through his untameable hair, a grin threatening the corner of his mouth like it had always done before this year. 

“You’ve figured something out,” Remus had realized, snapping his book shut and sitting up.

“Not quite,” James had said, but he was still thrumming with energy. “But I had a talk with McGonagall.”

Then he looked around. The common room was fairly empty, and no one was likely to overhear them, but James had cast a muffling charm anyway, before stowing away his wand, and moving towards the sofa. Lily moved easily, sitting up and giving him enough room so he could take a seat comfortably.

From there, James had told them about Felix Felicis. Which was such a stupid, pointless idea, that Remus had to agree it was absolutely brilliant. 

“I’m in love with McGonagall,” Remus had deadpanned after James stopped explaining, and the other two just nodded in agreement.

From there, it had been fairly simple, at least as far as heists go; James and Remus had an awkward time explaining to Lily that yes, they’d already stolen from Slughorn’s personal cabinet before, and knew how to brew a copycat potion that would take on the shape of whatever potion they wanted, both in look and somewhat in odor. 

It took a day to get everything ready, and then, only a day before they were all set to go home for summer holidays, they put the plan in action. Lily uncomfortably flirted with the Potions professor during a free period, while Remus snuck in with the Invisibility Cloak and James burst in as a further distraction. It had taken less than an hour, and they’d gotten the Felix Felicis with almost too much ease.

“It’s almost like we’d already taken the potion,” Lily had observed, as she held the phial carefully in her hands on the train ride back. She had sat in Peter’s old seat, in the Marauder’s traditional compartment, but Remus and James both privately agreed that she was a much better upgrade.

“When are we  _ actually  _ taking it, though?” James had pressed, leaning forward on his elbows.

“As soon as we can?” Lily had suggested. “It’s meant to make you successful in anything you try. There’s only enough for one dose, but if one of us takes it, and looks at all our maps--well, we’re bound to have some kind of breakthrough. That’s the point of the potion.”

Remus had scrubbed a hand across his face. “The moon’s in two days,” he’d said, a bit reluctantly. “I don’t know how long it’ll take, and I know it’s the first breakthrough we’ve had, so if you both want to, then…”

“No, we do this all together,” James had said firmly. He’d patted Remus’s knee, knowing that the summer holiday moons were the worst for him, without Prongs  (or Padfoot and Wormtail) to help him through it. “How soon do you think you’ll be on your feet again?”

“Third of July?” Remus had guessed. “I’ll at least be able to Apparate to your house by then.”

“Evans, could you make that?”

“I’ve got no real plans,” she’d said, shrugging. “I’ll be there.”

Before, getting Lily to come to the Potters’ house would have been a monumental achievement. But James had just grinned at her, and sat back, kicking his leg up into a cross-legged position.

“Then it’s a plan,” he’d declared, and Lily and Remus had nodded solemnly.

***

So Remus wakes up on the third of July, heavily bandaged and bruised, and promptly Apparates to the Potters’ house. He says a quick hello to Euphemia and Fleamont--they’re still in the kitchen, enjoying coffee and pancakes, and beam at him when they see him standing in the doorway--before he runs up to James’s room. 

The door’s already slightly ajar, and Lily’s lounging in a comfy armchair with a lap full of notes next to James’s bed. James is pinning up a bunch of maps around his room with sticking charms. They’re both dressed in Muggle clothes--same as Remus, dressed in ratty jeans and a striped, loose t-shirt--just in case they have to head into a Muggle area.

Remus knocks lightly on the door, and then throws himself onto the bed. “What’s the plan, then?”

Lily promptly says, “I’ll take the Felix Felicis, and examine the maps properly. From everything I’ve read about the potion, it… has a bit of a mind-altering effect, in addition to the increased luck. James and I agreed that you both would probably prefer to be sober, during everything, in case we find him. So I’m our best bet.”

Remus takes a deep breath, and hides his wince as his lungs scrape against his bruised ribs. “And...we’re sure it’s going to work?”

“At the very least, it should get us closer to him, if it’s brewed right,” James says. “And, since it’s Slughorn, it should be.”

Remus bites his teeth together hard, and shifts back into James’s pillow. His back is still painfully sore, and he can feel the bandages around his chest getting damp with a slow, leaking sort of blood, but he doesn’t say anything. The transformation happens every month, and this is much more important anyway.

James notices anyway, and says, “If you’re not feeling up to it, Remus, we can always do another day.”

“I’m fine,” Remus says automatically.

James sighs, and says, “Yeah, but--”

“If we can do this today,” Remus says firmly,  _ “ _ Then we’re doing this  _ today. _ ”

James lets out a deeper, more exasperated sigh, but turns to finish tacking up the last map--this one’s a zoomed-in cross section of a protected forest in Northeast England--before turning to Lily. “I think we’re ready, then. If you are, I mean.”

“Okay,” Lily says, rubbing at her neck nervously. She reaches into a tote bag laying by her feet, and pulls out the small phial of potion. “Well. Wish me luck, boys--though I suppose I won’t need it, actually.”

And with that, she downs it. Remus feels his breath catch in his throat. 

Lily winces as she swallows the last drop, and says, “Oh, that’s not very pleasant.”

“Concentrate,” James intones. “Think about Sirius. Think about how he’s missing. Do you have any gut feelings about it?”

Lily throws her head back, and shuts her eyes tightly. She cracks her knuckles in her lap, and rolls her shoulders back. Her legs cross, and then uncross. Remus watches her without blinking. James is doing the same, standing by a colorful map of Scotland with his hands shoved deep in his trousers.

Then, suddenly, Lily’s eyes pop open. She hops out of the armchair, and pulls her hair up into a loose bun with a rubber band that had been wrapped around her wrist. 

She starts pacing, and says, “You know what I just thought about? My great aunt. She used to live in Chelmsford. Miserable place in Essex, really, but my aunt, she’d always wanted to live in London. Chelmsford was as far as she ever got, having a job in a factory that didn’t pay well and didn’t ever promote her. But she never moved away, and I’d have to go all the time because my aunt always asked my mum to come up and visit, with me and Tuney in tow.”

“...All right,” Remus says, frowning and sitting up. “Why are you thinking of Chelmsford?”

Lily just shakes her head, turning to stare at him. Her eyes are brighter than normal, and an odd sort of grin was threatening the corners of her mouth. “I couldn’t tell you, but I was thinking of Sirius and the whole thing just sort of popped into my head. You know, the only thing I liked about visiting my aunt was this open-air market near her flat. It was lovely, it really was. I dunno if it’s still there, but we should really go, you know?”

“We can,” James says, cautiously, “after we’re finished with this.”

And then he tries to direct her attention back to the maps, but Remus has a hunch that’s confirmed by how Lily vehemently says, “No! We gotta go now. I can  _ feel  _ it.”

James opens his mouth to protest, but Remus cuts in and says, “Listen to her, Prongs. She’s talking about it for a reason.”

“Oh,” James says. And then, more firmly:  _ “Oh.” _

Lily beams at the both of them, and Remus, with only a bit of difficulty, hauls himself up from James’s bed. James sends a glance his way, but it’s interrupted by Lily, grabbing onto both of their wrists and saying, “Ready?”

“You’re not going to Apparate us there, are you? Remus isn’t feeling so well, I’m not sure how well he’ll take Side-Along,” James says nervously. “We could Floo, or do the Knight Bus.”

“It’ll be fine,” Lily promises. “I have a good feeling about it. Now close your mouth and let me concentrate.”

James casts another, more nervous glance towards Remus--but it’s too late, and they’re twisting away from James’s bedroom, with a loud, resounding  _ crack. _

***

They end up stumbling into an empty alleyway. Lily lands gracefully, but James has to support himself against a brick wall. Remus, still feeling woozy from the full moon, has to bury his head in his arms for a few moments before he feels stable enough to look up.

“The market’s that way,” Lily says, pointing to the right. “You guys feel okay enough to go?”

“Do  _ you? _ You did just Apparate with two, full grown Side-Alongs,” James says incredulously, recovering enough to walk over to Remus and place a comforting hand on Remus’s shoulder. Remus gives him a shaky thumbs-up, and doesn’t mention that he thinks he broke open one of his cuts during the Apparition. 

“I feel fine,” Lily says. “Great, actually. I really think we should start heading that way, but Remus, if you’re feeling poorly…”

“No,” Remus says, combing a hand through his hair and making an effort to stand steadily on his feet. “I’m not missing this. Let’s go.”

So they head out of the alleyway, James keeping a protective hand over Remus’s back as they follow Lily to the strange, open-air market she’d mentioned.

It  _ is  _ rather charming--the street’s roped off on either side, so no cars can accidentally drive through. Lines of stalls with striped umbrellas cover the street, which extends for about two blocks. Remus (as a result of his heightened werewolf senses) can smell plenty of ripening fruit, vegetables, as well as fruity blends of tea, fresh slices of meat, and even the cool, papery taste of artisan goods like rugs, wood cuttings, and woolen sweaters. 

James goes slightly bug-eyed while staring at the market--there’s no good wizard equivalent, Remus knows, since Diagon Alley is ordered into neat little storefronts, just like Bond Street in London. He cranes his neck to get a better look at the stalls, and the Muggles bustling between them, as Lily pulls them forward, towards a stand near the back of the market.

It’s obviously some sort of deli--it’s surrounded by open coolers filled with ice, and parcels wrapped in wax paper sit in haphazard piles across a wide card table covered with a checkered, plastic tablecloth. There’s also a shoebox with “SAL’S SANDWICH STAND MONEY” scrawled across it in bold black marker. The man running the stand smiles as Lily drags James and Remus up to the table.

“You must be Sal,” Lily says, beaming at him. The man nods.

“Can I help you?” He asks. He’s got a thick, Cockney accent, but he smiles at the three of them underneath a thick, frizzy beard. He reminds Remus of Hagrid a bit.

“Yes! I’d  _ love  _ a sandwich,” Lily says. “What do you have?”

“Lily, is this really--?” James starts to say, but Lily sighs, and shakes her head at him.

“Sorry about my friends,” she says to Sal, as he pulls out some premade sandwiches for her. “One of them isn’t feeling so well,” she jerks her thumb at Remus, “and we’re also looking for one of our other friends. But we’ve been looking for so long, and I’ve gotten a bit hungry, so I figured we could check around this market and everything.”

Sal frowns, and sets down a wax-paper bundle in front of Lily. Remus can smell that it's roast beef on rye bread, which he’d normally like, but his stomach flips uneasily as he smells the grease of it. There’s sugary lemonade too, in one of the coolers nearby, and the sickly scent mixes with the savory smell of the sandwiches uneasily. Remus swallows, and stumbles a bit back from the table.

Sal looks between Remus and Lily, and then at James, who’s moved closer to Remus, moving his hand from Remus’s back to his arm. “You kids certainly seem to be in a pickle, I have to say.”

Lily just smiles and pulls some Muggle money out of her back pocket. She gives it to Sal, and he counts the bills and shoves them into the shoe box, grabbing out some extra coins to give her change. Remus notices that he’s miscounted, though; he gives her too many coins, but Lily doesn’t say anything, just takes the change and the sandwich.

“Before I go,” she says, “I was wondering if maybe you’d seen my friend around.”

“Lotta teenagers around here,” Sal says. “But gimme a name and a description, just in case.”

Lily says, “He’s, ah. He’s been missing a while. But his name’s Sirius Black--I’m not kidding, I promise--and he’s about yea high,” She lifts her palm just slightly higher than her head, “black hair, grey eyes. His face is--noticeable. You wouldn’t forget it if you saw it.”

Sal clicks his tongue. “You know, now that you mention it…”

Remus’s heart leaps, and he can feel James’s hand go slack around his arm. 

“Hey, there’s Rhiannon,” Sal adds, leaning around Lily to point out a woman at a nearby stall. “She’s been around with a kid sorta like you described. Went by the name of John instead, though. Oi, Rhiannon! Over here!”

The woman whirls around. She’s holding a carton of peaches in her hands, and she holds it up at Sal, saying, “One minute! Gotta pay for these.”

Sal nods, and turns back to Lily. “I dunno your friend’s story, but Rhiannon’s a good sort,” he says. “I promise he’s been in good hands with her.”

James steps forward. “And you’re--you’re quite certain it’s him?” His voice sounds strange--throaty, and overfull at the same time.

“Fairly,” Sal says, shrugging. “At the very least, he matches up enough that it’s worth checking out.”

Remus shakes his head, and runs a hand through his hair. 

Sirius is here. 

Maybe. Probably.

It seems impossible, after all this time--or at least, improbable. 

Felix Felicis must be one  _ hell  _ of a potion.

He feels Sal’s eyes on him. He looks up, and Sal frowns at Remus. “Are you sure you’re all, right, kid? You seem ill, lad.”

“It’s okay, it happens every month,” Remus mutters, but James flocks back to him anyway, eyes calculating and mouth taut. 

“How bad was it?” he asks quietly.

“Same as always,” Remus says, shrugging. He knows his bandages are crusty with blood by now, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters, except for the fact that Sirius was  _ so close  _ to them. Everything else could wait--would have to wait.

The woman--Rhiannon--finally makes her way over, smiling curiously at Sal and the three of them. She’s blonde, short, and has a weathered, plain, but pleasant sort of face. She’s wearing an old sweater over a loose sundress, and she’s carrying bags full of fruit in her arms. 

“Ah, perfect,” Sal says. “This young lady right here was asking about a friend of yours, I believe. John, but she called him a different name. What was it--ah--”

“Sirius Black,” Lily supplies, turning her bright smile towards the woman. “Please, we’ve been looking for so long--is it--is he--?”

The woman, Rhiannon, pales. “You said the name ‘Sirius’?” 

“Yes,” James says, his shoulders rolling back as he steps forward. “Do you know him?”

“He’s got black hair,” Remus adds. “Long, or at least it was, when we last saw him. Grey eyes. Angular face, and average sort of height. He’s--well, he had a good sense of humor, but that could’ve changed, I don’t--”

“Who are you?” Rhiannon asks quickly, backing away from them slightly. 

“Please,” James says. “We’re friends. That’s it, I swear. I don’t know if he would’ve mentioned us, but my name’s James Potter, and these are my friends, Lily Evans and Remus Lupin. We’re worried, that’s it. He’s been gone--he’s been missing for a year, we just. We just want to find him. Please.”

Rhiannon bites at her lower lip. “You’re not with his family, are you?”

_ “No, _ fuck, God, no,” Remus blurts out before he even realizes it. Despite how ineloquently he put it, James and Lily nod enthusiastically along with him. 

Rhiannon sucks in her cheeks, and then puffs them back out like a balloon for a moment. She looks over at Sal, who shrugs, but then gives a slight nod after he looks at Lily for a moment.

“He’s… been staying with me,” she says, eventually. “He was in a rough sort of shape, for a while. But he’s been doing better, recently.”

“Really? Can we see him?” James asks, his eyes growing impossibly wide. 

Rhiannon looks hard at each of them, and Remus sees how her eyes hesitate over his scars, but move on without judgment. She sizes up James, and then Lily, and says, “I’ll check with him, but… if he says yes, then. Sure.”

“Thank you,” James says. “Oh, my God, thank you.”

Remus casts a sidelong glance at James. He’s got tears welling up in his eyes, and he has to take off his glasses to rub them away.

Rhiannon sighs, and turns to Sal. “Can I get two sandwiches, then?”

He hands her two, and says, “No charge. On the house.”

“I couldn’t possibly--”

“It’s a special occasion,” Sal says, smiling at her. “I’ve got a good feeling about all this.”

“Me too,” Lily chirps. She’s still beaming, and turns to James and Remus, her lips so wide they look like they might split in two.

“Well, I can’t argue with that, I suppose,” Rhiannon says, sighing. But she slips the sandwiches into her bags, and says, “Let’s go, then.”

“What? You mean--now?” James asks, his voice lilting up. Remus knows that he’s trying not to sound hopeful, because Remus is dealing with the same feeling--a bright burst of sunlight, it feels like, right in the middle of his chest and rising like heat to his brain.

“Might as well,” she says, and Remus feels the hope envelop him entirely.

Sirius.

After all this time--after a year that’s felt like  _ years-- _ they were finally going to see Sirius.


	7. July 1977, Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i feel like lord huron's "not dead yet" would rlly fit this and i stand by that assessment

Sirius can't help but stare, bug-eyed, as everyone walks in.

First, it’s Anna, but she’s followed by Lily Evans, right on her heels.

Evans looks the same--well, she’s gotten a haircut, and she’s started parting her hair in the middle. It falls only to her collarbones now, but it frames her face nicely. 

When she walks in, she beams at Sirius with an intensity that makes him immediately look away.

The next person to walk in is--it’s--it’s.

It’s James. Fucking shit. It’s  _ James. _

He has darker eye circles, and his glasses are slightly askew (he takes them off and polishes them when he’s nervous, Sirius knows). But otherwise, he’s exactly like Sirius remembers. Same brown eyes, same stupid hair, same white shirt and jeans combo as his typical Muggle getup. Completely the same.

His face twists up when he finds Sirius behind the counter, into something undefinable but definitely uncomfortable. His eyes become glassy--or he’s holding back tears. He freezes when Sirius meets his eyes.

Sirius doesn’t know what he’ll do if James is crying. 

Because James never cries, ever. Even at Quidditch losses, or when his dad was in hospital for a potions accident. He just never cries. So he can't be--he _shouldn't_ be--crying now.

The last person to come in is Remus. And he looks bedraggled, gaunt and limping. Sirius suddenly remembers that the full moon was only two days ago--by any right, he should still be taking it easy. That he’s in Chelmsford, instead, staring right back at Sirius with dark, amber eyes and a frown pulling at the corner of his mouth… well, it seems wrong. 

So wrong, that Sirius begins to open his mouth to apologize, only to be cut off by Anna, who maneuvers herself until she's right beside Sirius.

“Well,” she says quickly, “here we are.”

Lily nods, and then says, “Rhiannon, would you mind giving these three the room?” 

She gestures at Sirius, James, and Remus. Sirius stares down at the cashier counter. He wishes, absurdly, that he’d managed to flip the ABBA record before they’d come in. At least, then, there’d be some background noise, instead of the intense nothingness surrounding all of them now.

“I mean…” Anna says, and Sirius can feel her making eyes at him, begging him to look at her. He can’t. He can’t look at anyone right now. 

“I don’t know how I feel about that,” Anna eventually finishes, and bumps her hip against Sirius. He still doesn’t look up at her.

“Is there a back room we could go into, maybe?” Lily suggests. “Somewhere close enough that you could hear Sirius, but far enough to allow some privacy, maybe.”

Sirius feels Anna look at him again. He nods once, firmly, because he owes this to James and Remus, at least. 

His gaze is still fixed on the counter in front of him. He swallows, and it’s audible--it almost echoes around the whole store.

It’s absurd. It’s an absurd fucking situation.

“Well,” Anna says. “I guess so. But. If there’s anything I can do to help, or--”

“It’s all right, Anna,” Sirius says. He pretends he doesn’t notice James and Remus rear back at hearing his voice again. “I’ll let you know if I need you.”

“Okay, if you're sure,” Anna says. She bumps her hip against Sirius’s, once more, and then allows herself to be led into the back room by Evans. 

Sirius twists his fingers together underneath the table, and then apart. Then, he twists them together again.

He knows that he needs to look up. He knows he needs to talk to James and Remus.

So he sucks in a deep breath and untangles his fingers slowly. Then he looks up and says quietly, “Hey.”

James blinks. His face twists up further, but his body stays completely still. It’s like he’s been hit with a petrifying curse. “That’s all you have to say?”

Remus tears his eyes away from Sirius to sigh and pat James on the back. 

James tenses up underneath Remus’s touch, and Remus sighs again, and says, “Is there a seat somewhere around here that I could take?”

“O-oh. Yes. Yeah,” Sirius says quickly, and almost lunges towards the nearest stool that sits behind the counter. He grabs it, and pulls it around the cashier till towards Remus. Remus nods at Sirius and takes the seat.

“Sorry,” he says. “I was running on adrenaline today, and seeing you--I guess it just abandoned me. So. Sorry about that.”

“It was a full moon on Friday,” Sirius says, a bit earnestly. “I know. It’s fine, really. Do whatever you need, it’s not--I mean. I understand if you’re still feeling poorly.”

Both James and Remus stiffen at that. Sirius shrinks back, and fights the urge to stare at the counter again. 

Instead, he focuses on James’s face. It’s untwisted itself, but now, he just looks oddly wrecked.

“You still keep track of full moons?” he asks.

“I… I mean, yes,” Sirius says. “Is that--? I mean. I’m sorry. I don’t… I’m sorry.”

“No, that’s not--” James says, at the same time that Remus says, “Don’t apologize for that, Padfoot.”

The both of them look at each other, and then turn again to stare at Sirius. Sirius chews at his cheek.

“I’m just. Sorry. Generally,” he says, weakly. “About everything. And I know that’s--not enough. But. Still.”

“Yeah, well. Join the club,” James says, matching his tone note-for-note.

Remus sighs, and slumps over himself on the stool. He rubs at his face with his hands.

“Sirius,” he says. “You know we love you, right?”

Sirius flinches back. 

Without meaning to, and it’s quite a small reaction, all things considered. But he still does, and he hates himself for how James’s face falls immediately afterward.

But it’s just. That couldn’t be true anymore, could it? And it’s not like it’s  _ their  _ fault. But Sirius knows the truth, anyway--he knows he's difficult, nigh-on impossible to love, and he'd already blown all his chances with James and Remus, at any rate. So there was no need for them to pretend. 

Still, the least Sirius could do was humor them. Especially since they’d come all this way.

“That’s not what I meant to--” Sirius starts to say, but James unfreezes suddenly, stepping forward and then behind the counter, closer to Sirius. Sirius loses all of his words altogether, completely forgetting what he’d been planning to say.

James swallows. There are most definitely tears pulling at the edges of James’s eyes, now that Sirius is closer up. Sirius bites hard at the inside of his cheek when he feels identical ones start to well up in his own.

“Would it be all right if I hugged you, Padfoot?” James asks, quietly. He hardly ever did anything quietly. Anything he doesn’t really mean, at least.

“If you want,” Sirius says, just as softly, and James surges forward, arms wrapping like vices, like constrictions, around Sirius’s torso until he almost can’t breathe properly just from the force of it.

***

Sirius looks different.

It’s the first thing that Remus thinks, and he hates himself for it.

It’s definitely Sirius--the way his eyes flare up in recognition, staring at Remus, James, and Lily, confirms that. And his hair’s the same color (even if it’s cut shorter and shaggier than Remus ever remembers), he’s got the same nose and eyes. It is, without a doubt, Sirius.

But the way he holds himself isn’t normal. It’s not the way Remus remembers--always brash and brave, shoulders thrown back and spine held tall. But now, Sirius is curled in on himself. He’s shrinking back, and he’s smaller. Literally--he’s thinner, much thinner than Remus has ever seen him. It makes his face look sharper, meaner. But the wide, searching look in his eyes makes him look impossibly young. Remus idly wonders if there’s a sort of curse that could cause someone to age in reverse, because the Sirius of his memories was bigger, louder, and much older than the boy in front of him.

Remus glances over at James, but he seems frozen. He almost looks like he’s in pain, and Remus knows that he’s wondering what could’ve happened to Sirius to make him look this way, and make him stay away from Hogwarts and the Marauders. 

Sirius says “Hey,” and James says, “That’s all you have to say?” and Remus knows that it’s meant to be angry, to sound snappish, but his voice has gone gentle and tinged with hurt.

Remus feels dizzy. He feels lightheaded. He’s not sure if it’s because of Sirius, or the moon and the energy that he’s used up today, so he asks for a seat, and Sirius nearly stumbles over himself just to give him a stool.

Sirius watches him nervously as he sits, and Remus knows he doesn’t look great. He explains about losing adrenaline, and Sirius nods. 

“It was a full moon on Friday,” he says, and he says that he understands.  The fact that he still tracks the lunar cycle tugs at something deep within Remus. Remus swallows hard.

“You still keep track of the full moon?” James asks, evidently thinking the same thing as Remus.

Sirius stumbles over his words, and then says, “I’m sorry,” and Remus can’t help but blurt out, “Don’t apologize for that, Padfoot.”

Sirius looks oddly stricken at that, and Remus sucks in a deep, unsteady breath as Sirius launches into another streak of apologies. James matches his tone--hollow, heavy, but still and deep like a lake in a cave. It’s too much, and something occurs to Remus, something that he needs to clarify immediately.

“Sirius, you know we love you, right?”

Sirius flinches back at that. It hits at Remus like a physical blow, and he bites down hard on his cheek and tries to remind himself how to breathe. He counts to ten, and then to twenty, and by the time he feels steady again, not so weirdly emotional, James is hugging Sirius like he’s the human embodiment of the Devil’s Snare.

Sirius wraps his arms around James, too, but his eyes are still wide open, pale and bright with confusion. 

James pulls away, eventually, after squeezing Sirius hard a few more times. When he finally lets go of Sirius, he says, “I sort of want to hit you too, you know.”

Sirius shrugs, but the movement is jerky and stiff. “I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”

“We’ve been looking for you,” Remus cuts in. “Ever since you sent James that letter, we’ve been looking for you. You haven’t made it easy.”

Sirius turns to look at Remus again, and his gaze pinballs up and down, like he’s trying to memorize every line of Remus’s body. 

“Sorry,” he blurts out again, and then rubs a hand at his neck. “I mean. I know I’ve said that a lot, in the past couple of minutes, but I’m. I’m really sorry about what I did to you, with Snape, Moony, I really am, you have to know that, I--”

“It’s all right,” Remus says, interrupting him. His voice sounds harsh, so he shakes his head, and slides off the stool, rounding the counter to where James and Sirius are. “It really is, Padfoot. I’ve had a--I’ve had a whole year to get over it. And… and I was always going to forgive you, even before you pulled a fucking disappearing act.”

Sirius blinks. “I… er, I mean… Thank you, Moony. Really. Thank you.”

“But what  _ isn’t  _ all right,” Remus continues, “is the fact that you pulled a  _ fucking disappearing act. _ ”

He slaps Sirius’s shoulder. Not hard, but suddenly enough that Sirius starts, and doesn’t have time to recuperate before Remus is tackling Sirius in a bear hug, James-style.

“I’m so fucking mad at you,” he mutters into the top of Sirius’s hair. “Fucking ridiculous, you are.”

“Noted,” Sirius says. He sounds breathless.

“What were you  _ thinking?” _ James demands from behind them.

Remus feels Sirius tense up, yet again, under his arms. Remus carefully untangles the two of them, and Sirius leans his hip against the cashier counter. He runs a hand through his hair, and it gets messy, sticking up and staticky in places, and falling haphazardly over his forehead. It makes him look more like James than usual.

“I. Er,” Sirius says, and then groans. He pushes his hip further into the counter, and then says, “You said no contact. And I know how serious you get about those sorts of things, and. I knew I had to get away from my family--I couldn’t live there. Anymore. Because--God, I just…”

He trails off. Remus remembers how careless Sirius used to be with his words. How every phrase flowed out like water, and he said anything he could think of, under the sun. And it wasn’t all the time--he could be tight-lipped about things, usually involving his family--but even then, even when he stuttered, he'd alway say what he'd mean to say. He'd never cut himself off, or try and get himself to stop talking.

Plus, he hadn’t even made a pun about the word ‘serious,’ when he’d been talking. It’s such a stupid thing for Remus’s heart to break over.

“When I said no contact,” James says, “I didn’t mean it was over. It was never over. You should’ve--you should’ve known that. You  _ had  _ to have known that, Sirius, I would’ve never…”

James’s eyes go wide, as he drops off, too. Remus almost feels how heavy and thick the air has grown, with the weight of everything going unsaid. 

He groans, and runs a hand down his chest. The coarse bandages underneath his shirt feel gross, tacky and damp. They’re standing in a thrift shop in fucking  _ Chelmsford, _ and they’ve found a nervous, completely wrong version of Sirius after a year apart. Everything’s gone mad, and it’s terrible. It’s absolutely horrendous.

Remus lets out a mirthless chuckle, and buries his head in his hands.

“Moony?” James and Sirius say at the exact same time, and Remus holds up a hand.

“I’m fine, you fuckers,” he says. “Really. But this is all so fucking  _ stupid. _ ”

“It’s not--” James starts to say, but Remus just shakes his head. He points a finger at Sirius.

“ _ You  _ are a goddamn drama queen,” he says. “What, you thought we’d abandon you over something so trivial as almost making me a murderer? Sirius, if you’d gone through with it, I would’ve forgiven you before I even got the chance to get fucking hanged for being a feral werewolf. And James would’ve forgiven you at my goddamn funeral.”

Sirius flinches back and stares at his shoes.

“And if you didn’t know that, then that’s on us,” Remus says, turning to stare at James, even as he keeps addressing Sirius. “We never talked to you enough about your home life. We should’ve known something was happening. We should’ve helped stop it. We should never have stopped talking to you at such a fucking vulnerable point in your life.”

“It wasn’t your responsibility,” Sirius starts to say, but Remus just holds up his hand.

“The  _ stupid  _ thing,” he continues, “is that it’s all a bloody fucking moot point now, because you ran away to live on the streets and apparently get adopted by some barmy Muggle woman. And we found you, and we should be fucking happy, but we’re all stumbling over each other to apologize. It’s bloody mental, is what it is.”

James and Sirius both pause, and then frown at each other.

“He’s got a point,” James admits. “Even if I am mad at you. We’ll have time for that later.”

“I--I suppose,” Sirius says. He slowly, shyly starts to smile. It’s much different from his regular--from his  _ before  _ smile, but it’s real and it’s there, nonetheless. “I’m--I’m really glad that you guys are here. And that you don’t hate me. I really, really am.”

“Good,” James says. And then he holds his arms out wide and sighs. “Bring it in, then, lads. C’mon, we’ve gotta group hug at some point. It’s a proper Marauders reunion.”

Sirius and Remus immediately throw themselves at James, who makes a bit of an “ooph” sound, but holds on tight, strong and warm.

And even though Remus is exhausted, still bleeding, and a bit dizzy, he feels better than he has in a long time. Since last April, really.

Sirius makes a humming noise at the back of his throat, and then asks, like it only just occurred to him: “Hey, where’s Peter?”

Remus huffs out a laugh, and he feels James’s grip tighten around both of their shoulders.

“Does it matter?” James asks, which is a pretty good explanation, as far as brief explanations go.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Sirius says, and burrows tighter into James.

And Remus laughs again, and closes his eyes, basking in the warmth of his two best friends.


	8. July 1977, Part III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm not sure if i likeeeee thissssssss
> 
> there's probably gonna be one or two more sections about july until we move on. Idk what sort of months I'll write about afterward, but one thing's clear: I promised Rhiannon murking Voldemort with a gun.
> 
> so we'll get to see her murking him with a gun, even if it gets absurd and stupid and i rely on tropes and suddenly introduce soulmates and enemies-to-lovers and fake-dating and even mpreg, who the hell knows
> 
> but we'll get there, even if it's bitter and terrible and troped-out and stupid!! I promise.
> 
> (also i have nothing against fandom tropes i love them i was just trying to make a point about how even if the story goes downhill and i throw in absurd plot points for this specific story then i'll still try to write it. pls don't hate me soulmate au is actually one of my favorites ever)

The backroom of the thrift shop is also Sirius’s makeshift bedroom--a fact that Rhiannon had quite forgotten about, in all the mess that the day’s been so far. She and the girl, Lily Evans, head into the backroom, and they're immediately confronted with a somewhat sad-looking room, indeed.

Sirius’s cot is shoved into one corner and a wobbling, three-legged nightstand sat next to it. A few paperback books that Sirius had borrowed from Rhiannon rest precariously on it, and a cheap plywood bookshelf trembles against the opposite wall, stuffed with Sirius’s clothes, shoes, and a dark wood analog table clock that she’d given him. 

Otherwise, though, it’s still very much the backroom of a thrift shop. It wasn’t a very big room, oblong-shaped, and the corners of the room not occupied with Sirius’s things had old metal shelves crammed with clothes, knick knacks, and a few broken records and electronic appliances littered the floor. A clipboard with inventory sheets and a stubby pencil hung on a peg next to the door.

And it isn’t that Rhiannon hadn’t wanted to let him up into her flat--she’d even offered it as soon as he came back from hospital, pockets full of little orange tubes of pills. At that point she hadn’t even known him that well. Welcoming a strange teenager into her flat wasn’t an exciting prospect, just one that had made the most sense.

But Sirius had refused. Evidently remembering her offer about the cot in the backroom all those months ago, he’d kept insisting that he take that space instead. Rhiannon had complied, thinking that maybe he was nervous about sharing a space with an older woman that he admittedly didn’t know that well. But even after he’d recovered, and had started properly working for Rhiannon, he’d continued to live in the backroom--even after she made it very clear that she’d be fine giving him her couch in the flat.

She’d figured that the whole backroom thing was about privacy, but now, standing with his friend in that same backroom and seeing how pitiful his living conditions were, she felt a hot rush of guilt lance painfully through her chest. Staring at the backroom like this felt like she suddenly was wearing new corrective lenses--because she could see, suddenly and painfully clearly, how wrong this looked. It looked like mistreatment. 

Only giving a teenaged boy one small section in a backroom? What had Rhiannon been  _ thinking? _ She should’ve forcibly moved him into her flat--in fact, if she’d  _ actually  _ cared about him, then she would’ve given him her bedroom, because a boy like him, living on the streets, deserved that much.

Now, standing next to one of Sirius’s friends, she  has  to clear her throat and say, “Er, I offered him to move into my flat, and he said no, but--I should’ve insisted he move in with me, I know that’s no excuse, I just didn’t want you to think--well. He’s not told me a lot about his family, but I didn’t want you to think that I’m  _ like  _ them, not that…”

She trails off awkwardly when the girl, Lily Evans, places a hand on her shoulder. She’s taller than Rhiannon by a few good inches, and when she looks up, she finds the girl smiling gently at her. Her bright green eyes flash with something--Rhiannon isn’t sure what, exactly--and she finds herself much more relaxed and at ease than she had been all day.

“It’s fine, Rhiannon,” Lily says. “It’s fine if I call you Rhiannon, right? I’m not sure if you prefer being on a first-name basis with a bunch of teenagers, but I don’t know your surname…”

“It’s Hart,” Rhiannon says, surprising even herself. She’s not in the habit of letting strangers into her shop and giving them her last name (although her track record with Sirius would beg to differ). “But Rhiannon’s just fine, I promise. I know it seems ancient, but being thirty-two means that I still have trouble being called a missus. It just makes me feel old, and I don’t think I’m quite there yet.”

“All right, then,” Lily says, with a light laugh. She sits herself down on a stool nearby the metal shelves. 

Rhiannon doesn’t bother trying to find a seat--instead, she just leans against the wall next to the door. She tries to look casual about it, but it’s so that she can hear if Sirius calls out for her. Just in case.

As if she can read Rhiannon’s thoughts, Lily says, “He’ll be fine, by the way. James and Remus love him more than anything else on the planet. They were looking for a whole school year. I’ve never seen either of them look so desperate.”

Rhiannon chews on her lip, and crosses her arms. “I didn’t--he didn’t even tell me his name until last month. And it was only his first, not his last. I mean, hell, he refused to live with me until he had to. I think he was scared of me going to the police about it, and that’s fair, I suppose. I threatened him with it the first few times we met, so.”

“He didn’t give you his name?” Lily asks, frowning. 

“Said his name was John, but he was clearly lying about it,” Rhiannon says. “I didn’t want to scare him off, he was so skittish about everything, so I just let him call himself that til he said his actual name, which is sorta daft, by the way. What sort of person is named after a constellation?”

“We, er. We go to this school, a boarding school, in Scotland. It’s got a lot of elite families, lots of old money. There’s a lot of strange names that crop up there,” Lily explains.

“Suppose so, what with Sirius, and that other friend of yours named ‘Remus’,” Rhiannon says, even as she thinks over what Lily’s just said. 

Because that sort of boarding school, with talk of elite families and money...Sirius’s family might be wealthy. That’d explain the way he didn’t want to get the police involved, at any rate--families like those often got their way, because money has more sway over the justice system than it has any right to. 

“Wait,” Lily says, narrowing her eyes. “You said he ‘refused to live with you, until he had to.’ What does that mean?”

“Oh,” Rhiannon says, and kicks at the wall with the heel of her shoe. “I’m not sure if it’s my story to tell, to be honest. I don’t want to, er, say anything that Sirius doesn’t want his friends to hear about.”

Lily nods, and then rubs at her neck. She laughs a little, and then says, “You know, he wasn’t even my friend before he went missing. It’s a bit funny, actually.”

“Really? Then why’d you...? I mean, Chelmsford is a far way to go from Scotland,” Rhiannon says.

“I’m actually from Surrey, but I get what you’re saying,” Lily says, and runs a hand through her hair. It’s a dark red colour, striking against her pale skin and sharp features. Rhiannon wonders if part of the requirement to go to her boarding school was being strangely beautiful. All four teenagers she’d met so far would fit the bill, at least.

“No, um. He was a classmate of mine,” Lily says. “We--we get sorted into houses, you know, like a proper snooty boarding school, so he was in mine and I had almost all my classes with him as a result. He was top of the class, even though I never saw him actually studying. And I thought he was obnoxious, really--he was on the, er, sports team with James, and he played all sorts of pranks on other students. 

“And some of those pranks could be really cruel, so I thought that was all he was. Just cruel, and loud, you know? And he doesn’t--he comes from this family that’s essentially nobility, and they can be really bigoted. I knew he wasn’t like that, but it coloured my perception of him regardless.”

Rhiannon nods, a bit terse. She doesn’t like hearing that kind of thing about Sirius, no matter whether or not what Lily was saying was true. And it didn’t match up with what she knew about Sirius, who’d been almost aggressively unobtrusive and quiet. Even if he could be a bit cheeky, at times.

Now, she can’t help but wonder whether that cheek wasn’t another quiet part of his personality, but rather something he’d been fighting against. Something he’d been trying to repress. She doesn’t like the thought of him trying to shut himself down, or acting like a person he’s not, in front of Rhiannon.

Out loud, Rhiannon says, “Why did you try and look for him, then?”

Lily shrugs and says, “I knew James and Remus were looking, for a long time. And I didn’t do anything about it, but I should’ve. Because no one deserves to be isolated from their friends, like that, especially not any of those three. They love each other--really love each other. And… well, and besides, I missed the idiot, even if I didn’t want to admit it.”

“You know,” Rhiannon says. “I really don’t think that you and I know the same Sirius.”

Lily sighs, but nods. “I think you’re right. I think he’s changed--a lot. I could tell that when I walked through the door. It scared me a bit.”

“Scared you?”

“Maybe ‘concerned’ is the better word,” Lily amends. “I don’t know what could’ve happened to make him change so much. And he deserves to be happy, after everything he’s had to go through, I think. I don’t even know the half of it, but I know he ran away from home because of problems with his family, and they’re not... well, they've not a good reputation. They’re known for being the bad sort of people.”

“It’s probably not my place to ask,” Rhiannon says, “But he made it seem like he didn’t have friends like you to help him out when I asked. He sort of implied that he was alone, or that he preferred being alone.”

“You’ve not asked a question,” Lily observes, “so I wouldn’t worry about whether you asked a wrong one at all. But, er. It’s complicated, and probably Sirius deserves to tell you, just like he deserves to tell us the truth about where he was and what he did over this past year. 

“But something happened between James, Remus and himself, and he blamed himself for it all. And he wasn’t… wrong, to do that, but it got extreme. When he ran away, he sent a note to James, but no way to contact him, and it nearly drove James to madness. I’ve seen him have multiple panic attacks about it actually. It wasn’t pretty to watch.”

“I’ll bet,” Rhiannon says sympathetically. “You kids seem like you’ve all been through more than you deserve, this year.”

Lily shrugs, and looks away. “It’s life, though, isn’t it? Only goes downhill and gets more complicated from here. Or so I’ve heard.”

“You know,” Rhiannon says, kicking at the wall again, “I’m not so sure about that.”

Lily looks up and frowns at her. “How so?”

“Well, I grew up in a children’s home,” she says bluntly. “My parents died when I was young, and none of my other family members were either capable of taking care of me, or wanted to. So it was a children’s home for me, for years, and a lotta people there told me I’d never amount to much. ‘S all I would hear, sometimes, even if they were speaking different words, y’know?”

“Sure,” Lily says, even though it’s evident she doesn’t. But that’s all right--she’s young, and probably a bit rich, what with the boarding school, and she’s sitting on a stool in Rhiannon’s shop listening to her anyway.

So Rhiannon continues, “When I turned eighteen and didn’t have a place at the children’s home anymore, I had nowhere to go, nothing to do. I thought I was gonna die by the time I hit twenty, never mind thirty. I did a lotta bad things in those years, met a lotta bad people. Certainly wasn’t helping my case, none.

“But when I was twenty-four, I got this shop.” Rhiannon waves a hand around, encompassing the pale, harsh panel lighting, scrubbed floors, and cheap furniture strewn throughout the room. “And it doesn’t look like much. Probably  _ isn’t  _ much at all. But it was something good, truly good, in the midst of all the bad stuff. It was something I could cling to, and build a foundation from. 

“And suddenly my life wasn’t so complicated. It wasn’t going downhill. I had stability, and I had a foundation of good I kept building from. People will tell you that family makes you happy, or marriage, or friends, I dunno. Maybe that’s true--I’ve always been short on all of them. All I had was myself, and the things I loved, and I built myself up from there and it’s worked well for me. So I guess what I’m trying to say is that life doesn’t have to be a struggle, y’know? It doesn’t have to be hard. Even when hard things come around, and your nerves flare up, you just need to focus on the good things, and then the bad won’t feel so hard.”

***

After the group hug with James and Remus, Sirius feels nearly boneless. 

(He doesn’t realize it until much later, but that’s because every rigid inch of tension had dripped out of his body, during that hug.)

He takes a deep, steadying breath, and opens his mouth to say--what, he doesn’t know. He wants to ask about Hogwarts, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to think about the things he’s missed, the pranks against the Slytherins or even just smoking and shooting the shit with Remus and James with a Muggle record playing in the background.

He wants to ask about Regulus, but he can’t. He can’t think about him right now, not at all. And James and Remus wouldn’t know anything about that, anyway.

He wants to ask why  _ Evans,  _ of all people, decided to help look for him. He wants to ask how they found him. He wants to dig into their brains and sift through to find out the real,  _ really  _ real, actual reasons why they were here.

And at the same time, he knows they have questions too. They’ll probably want to know about why he finally left his family, what really caused it, and what happened in the year up until this point. They’ll want to know every minute detail, even though Sirius doesn’t think he can tell them anything without feeling sick about it. 

Because he knows they’ll think he’s pathetic, for how he’s handled everything. And if they bring up his family, or want to know what happened there, Sirius thinks he’ll probably choke. And then everything will come spilling out, like a dam that’s gotten one hairline fracture too many.

So in lieu of anything Sirius wants to say, or that James and Remus want him to, he says, “I should tell you guys now that Rhiannon doesn’t know about the whole...magic, thing.”

Remus nods, as if he’d guessed that, but James says, sounding genuinely confused, “She doesn’t?”

“Well, it’s not like I’ve had much use for magic in the past year,” Sirius defends. “Other than being Padfoot occasionally, and she doesn’t know about that, either.”

“But--but what about your wand? Where do you keep it, if you’re not using it? And you’re of age, you could do  _ whatever  _ you want with magic and no one could stop you,” James points out.

Sirius finds it almost endearing, how James sounds nearly offended, just for him. He laughs and says, “Well, it’s not like there’s much magic I can do, anyway, without my wand and all.”

Then he tenses up again, and immediately recognizes the feeling of having bones again in his body.

The whole not-having-a-wand thing--that was bound to raise some suspicion.

Remus and James say, at the exact same time, “You don’t have a  _ wand?” _

“I, er. Well,” Sirius says.

“Where is it? What the hell happened to it? Oh my god, do your parents have it?!” James asks frantically.

Sirius ducks his head and rubs at his neck, mostly to avoid having to make eye contact with James. 

“Sirius,” James hisses, and tries to put his hand on Sirius’s shoulder.

Sirius deftly slides out right before James can grasp at his shoulder, though, and says, “I should check on Rhiannon and Evans, shouldn’t I? See how they’re getting on and all.”

“Are you trying to  _ run away _ from this fucking conversation?” James asks, following Sirius close on his heels as Sirius inches closer and closer to the backroom door.

“Maybe,” Sirius acknowledges, because even if he’s a coward, it’s still polite to be honest about being one. “But it’s only the backroom, it’s not like I can Apparate away or anything--never even passed that test, so. Don’t worry about me.”

“I absolutely bloody will,” James says, and follows Sirius right to the door. Remus isn’t that far behind him. “I’m not letting you out of my sight for at least twenty-four fucking hours, I’ll let you know. And don’t think you can just avoid this conversation, I want to know everything, and I have a right to know.”

Sirius bristles at this, because a right to know? He really thought he had a right to know what was going on?

A year without him, of thinking that James hated him. And that had been fine by Sirius, because it made _sense_ , and suddenly James has forgiven him and has a  _ right _ to know everything about Sirius’s life? When he’d very clearly chosen to cut Sirius out of his life, the last time they’d spoken?

A hot, messy sort of rage wells up in his throat at the thought, but he has to choke it back and choke it down. Because, well. 

If they got into a shouting match, it’d be James who won. It's always James who wins.

And his eyes, big and brown and fractured into pieces by the light reflecting off his glasses--Sirius knows that he doesn’t want a fight. Instead, he just wants to be friends again, as daft as Sirius thinks that that might be.

So Sirius digs his nails into his palm, and says, “Later. I'll answer some of your questions later. I just--Anna, I don’t want to leave her alone for too long with this whole--thing. It’s probably as much of a bombshell for her, as it is for me.”

James opens his mouth--probably to protest--but Remus lays a hand on his shoulder, and Sirius sees him subtly shake his head at James.

To Sirius, Remus says, “Okay, that’s fair. We’ll have plenty of time to talk about this later.”

“Yeah,” Sirius says, and exhales, long and slow. And then he props open the door to the backroom, and waves James and Remus in before him, because he knows they won’t stay out in the shop, even if he tells them to.

***

Before Lily can say anything to Rhiannon’s story, Sirius is bursting through the backroom door and pulling Rhiannon into a hug.

...Actually, that’s probably not the best way to describe it. That’s a description that’s fit for the old Sirius.

This Sirius opens the door carefully, and actually lets James and Remus through before himself. As soon as she spots him, Rhiannon’s immediately leaning over to Sirius and wrapping her arms tight around his shoulders. She whispers something quietly to him, and he nods and says something in return, and then she hugs him tighter.

Lily watches with interest, but finds her gaze sliding over to James and Remus. 

Remus looks a bit dazed, which makes sense. It’s been a surprising sort of day, she supposes. There’s a smile that keeps hinting at the corners of his mouth, and his sagging shoulders suddenly remind Lily of how worn out he is. She quickly hops up and offers him the stool, which he takes gratefully, without any sort of protest. Remus must be exhausted.

James’s face is--more complicated.

He keeps a watchful eye on Sirius and Rhiannon, seemingly trying to take everything in and remember it as if it were as permanent as a stone carving. But he also looks worried. There’s a rigid set to his shoulders, and Lily recognizes the fast-slow-then-fast-again breathing pattern that means he’s on the edge of a panic attack.

Lily takes a step towards James and nudges him with her elbow.

“He’s all right,” she whispers to him, and takes his wrist in her hand. She’s almost surprised by how natural it feels to do it. “We can see he’s all right. He's here, he's not missing anymore."

James nods, but whispers back, “He’s not the same, though.”

“Would you be?”

James shrugs, but she watches his eyes grow a bit darker, a bit dimmer. “I guess not. But I just wish--I wish I could’ve been there.”

“You are now,” Lily says softly. Her fingers drift down towards his hand until she can thread her fingers through his. She squeezes his palm lightly. 

James smiles gently at her and says, a bit louder, certainly loud enough for Sirius to hear: “I’m not letting him go, this time.”

“I know,” Lily says, and smiles as the tension finally bleeds out of his shoulders, in favor of a stronger spine and a proud tilt to his head.

Because that kind of posture meant that James was serious about something. It meant that  _ he  _ meant business.

And Lily finds herself liking it. A lot.

She squeezes his hand again, and her smile grows wider, keeping time with James's own, matching grin.


	9. July 1977, Part IV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello and welcome 2 the hot mess starring me and my version of sirius black

They end up staying the night at Rhiannon’s shop. 

James is making good on his promise of not letting Sirius out of his sight, so Lily volunteers to run back to his parents and tell them what’s going on. She pops out of the shop, telling Rhiannon that she needs fresh air and is going for a walk around the block.

Luckily, Remus and Lily’s parents had already been under the assumption that they’d be gone on an overnight trip. Lily tries to keep her message to the Potters as brief as possible, but when she gets back, she quietly tells Remus and James that Euphemia and Fleamont want to see Sirius, and that Euphemia had burst into tears at the news that Sirius had finally been found.

James nods at that, but Remus knows that he decides to table it until they deal with literally everything else, first. Because there were about a million and one things to do, of course, now that Sirius has been found safe and alive.

Remus hadn’t ever thought about what he and James were going to do  _ after  _ they found Sirius. Of course, there had been all sorts of idealized scenarios--Remus rather always fancied the one where they hugged him, and never let him go, and the whole thing would then fade to black like they lived in a romantic movie.

But they’d hugged him, and then they’d let him go, and then life went on. Remus should’ve expected something like that. He’s had his expectations reality-checked ever since he was four years old.

So time continues trudging on, and after Lily reappears, Rhiannon gets cheap Indian takeaway for the five of them. Remus knows that James feels bad about Rhiannon footing the bill, but none of them had enough Muggle money to cover the whole thing. Lily only had a few pounds left in her back pocket, and Remus hadn’t brought any money at all.

Remus finds himself surprised that dusk has fallen, by the time they sit down for dinner (on the floor of Rhiannon's shop, with newspapers spread out as makeshift placemats. Remus gets a comfy cushion to sit on, but everyone else just settles themselves on the linoleum tile). 

It’s feather-light in its approach, the way it always is in the summer months, and it means that it’s been hours since they’d entered the shop. Hours since they’d found Sirius.

They eat the takeaway with plastic forks, and because none of them could speak about anything remotely meaningful, they talk about Muggle music instead. Even James is fairly well-versed in it, or at least the discographies of David Bowie and Simon & Garfunkel. 

After lightly debating what Bowie’s best record is (they end up settling on  _ Ziggy Stardust, _ although Remus and Sirius make a lively argument for  _ Diamond Dogs) _ , they finish dinner and Rhiannon finds sleeping bags, blankets, and pillows for them in her flat above the shop. She’d also offered her couch to them, but Remus, James, and Lily all turned it down.

Sirius had sighed around his last bite of curry, and said, “They probably want to sleep in the backroom, with me.”

“Indeed, we do,” James chirps, and Sirius had rolled his eyes, but Remus hadn’t missed the small twitch to the corner of his mouth.

It hadn’t been much, but. Remus still had considered it progress.

So they’d ended up settling on the small bit of floor space around the backroom. Remus was given more pillows and blankets than Lily and James--most definitely a calculation on their part, but Remus wasn’t about to pick a fight about it--and ends up laying the closest to Sirius’s cot, on the ground right next to him.

They all settle in, and Remus checks the clock on the bookcase near Sirius’s bed--it was only a bit after eight at night, but he feels absolutely exhausted. He figures it’s a combination of the dramatics of the day, as well as the lingering effects of the last full moon--still, as Remus pulls an afghan up to his chin, he can feel sleep start to pull at him. His eyelids almost immediately begin to lose the battle against it.

Sirius, noticing this, sits up on his cot, cross-legged, and says, “Night, Remus.”

Remus nods, and decides to let his eyes start to close. “Night…”

And just like that, he’s out like a light.

***

When Remus wakes up, he can tell it’s early in the morning.

There are very few benefits to being a werewolf--and the only ones that Remus values are the enhanced hearing, smell, and ability to see in the dark.

Because of his night vision (of sorts), he can see the hands of the clock nearby. It’s half past five in the morning. He can hear the steady breathing of James and Lily, laying in a pile of pillows and blankets that have grown indiscriminate over the course of the night.

Remus sits up, rubbing idly at his temple as he does. He’s got a lingering headache, but the soreness of his muscles and bones has greatly diminished since yesterday. Tomorrow, he should feel right as rain. 

At least until the next full moon, that is.

As he sits up, he realizes that Sirius’s breathing isn’t as deep or as steady as James and Lily. He frowns, and looks over to Sirius--only to find him already staring back at Remus.

“Morning,” Remus whispers.

“Hey,” Sirius whispers back. He’s laying on his side, blinking slowly as he looks at Remus. “I forgot your eyes glow in the dark.”

“Creepy, isn’t it.”

“Not really,” Sirius says softly. “You should go back to sleep.”

“I dunno, I slept pretty well,” Remus says. “Why are you still awake?”

Sirius flips onto his back, and shrugs his shoulders against the mattress. “Sometimes I don’t sleep that well.”

“Yeah,” Remus says. “I know. Anything I can do?”

Sirius shrugs again. “Probably not much. Plus I don’t wanna wake James or Evans up.”

Remus hums. He thinks through it. 

He and Sirius had always gotten on well--they were best friends, after all--but there wasn’t much that Remus had ever given Sirius, in terms of emotional support. At least, not like Sirius did for him. 

Sirius had always been gentle when Remus needed. When Remus had a headache, or was exhausted, Sirius would always know, always lower his voice and offer Remus the most comfortable seat in the common room, or the best slice of meat in the Great Hall. He was unobtrusively gentle. The kind of thing that made Remus feel cared for, but not smothered to death.

What did Remus give to him?

Well, weed, when Remus could find it in the community garden next to the greenhouses. Chocolate from his personal stashes. Muggle records, and suggestions for more music. Cigarettes--Remus liked rolling his own, but he also had access to the Muggle, commercial kind, courtesy of his mum. She’d send him the kind she liked best through owl post, Embassy Bright Blue, as long as he promised not to tell his dad. Remus had told her that they helped after full moons, which was only a little bit true.

Sirius had preferred the Muggle kind, had loved Embassy cigarettes and would always beg one off Remus when he was feeling stressed or upset about something. They were weaker, tasted worse, and left a stale smell of tobacco smoke in a room for hours, if not days, afterward. bBut for Sirius, they were a vice. 

Remus clicks his tongue as he suddenly remembers that he has a squashed pack of Embassy Bright Blues in his jean pocket, from yesterday. He leans over to wear his jeans are crumpled in the corner--he hadn’t brought a change of clothes to Rhiannon’s store, so he’d just slept in his boxers and his shirt--and pulls out the box. 

“Sirius,” he says, “want a smoke?”

He sees Sirius blink in the darkness, but finally, he sits up. “Yeah. I really do, actually.”

“Good, because I’ve got my mum’s smokes.”

“You’re a goddamn life saver, Moony,” Sirius says, more passionate than anything else he's said in the past twenty-four hours.

  
  


***

They sit on the kerb outside the shop, and Sirius watches as Remus lights up his fag with the tip of his wand.

It’s a cool trick that Remus had taught himself in fourth year, and afterward, Sirius would always insist that Remus light Sirius’s fag, too. Remus leans in this time, too, and Sirius lets him do it even though he’d grabbed a book of matches before they’d gone outside. 

There's something oddly intimate just in Remus lighting Sirius’s fag, and he hesitates for a moment before moving away, even though his fag’s already lit, the cherry puffing out little grey wisps of smoke.

It’s still dark outside, and cool, despite it being the dead of summer. Sirius supposes it must be early, but he hadn’t checked the time. He’d been up for hours, anyway. 

When he got like this, sometimes he’d transform into Padfoot to try and catch snatches of sleep. But it felt vulnerable, to do something like that with his friends in the room. They’d know something was wrong if they woke up to Padfoot instead of Sirius.

Not that it isn’t incredibly evident that something’s wrong, anyway. But if Sirius has to deal with the squinting eyes and twisting mouth of a concerned James Potter for even one more minute, he feels like he’s going to go insane.

Remus has always been smoother with his concern. Sirius has thought a lot about it over the years, and he figures that Remus feels a lot like dipping a burnt hand into cold water. It’s the same sort of relief, mixed with a stilling kind of shock. All of the throbbing, bloody hurt in Sirius’s body just suddenly recedes, leaving nothing but an absentminded ache in its place.

It feels easy to slip back into that this morning. Remus even offered him his favorite sort of fags, just like always. And underneath the fluorescent orange of a street lamp, slightly backlit by the cherry embers at the end of his cigarette, Remus looks softer and gentler than ever. Sirius can see the curl to his hair, but not the full honeyed color of it, and he can see the silvery swipe of scars over his skin, but not the knobbed, raised edges of them. 

The only thing that stands out are his eyes and how they glow in the low lighting of just-before-dawn. The amber color looks almost unearthly, and should be unsettling. Instead, having Remus look at him so steadily with those eyes makes Sirius feel relaxed and grounded.

They both sit silently for a while, listening to the faint sounds of a suburb slowly waking. Sirius knows that just down the corner a bit, Mr. Parker was already up and baking, preparing for the early morning rush. It’s quiet enough that he can hear the rumble of car engines as they drive a few streets over. A pigeon coos, and flaps its way over to sit atop a utility pole on the block corner.

Remus is the first to break the silence. He’s smoked his fag down to the filter in short, aggressive drags, and he drops it down and crushes it underfoot as he says, “How bad was it, really?”

Sirius hums, and blows smoke out through his nose. He rubs at his jaw, and says, “Not so bad, honestly.”

“You know, you’ve got this tic for when you’re really trying to sell a lie?” Remus says, and mirrors the position of Sirius’s hand on his jaw. “That, right there. Used to be how McGonagall could tell you were lying, I think.”

“You knew, and you never said?” Sirius asks, looking over at Remus, who smiles and ducks his head. He pulls out the smoke pack and shakes out another cigarette.

“Thought it was funny, most of the time,” Remus says. “I wanted to see how long it’d take before you picked up on what you were doing.”

“Took a long time, apparently.”

“Sometimes you’re a bit oblivious,” Remus agrees. His smile falters, just slightly.

Sirius crushes his own fag under his heel, too--it’s burnt down to just a nub by now, anyway. He presses his lips together, and then starts to say, “I’m sor--”

But Remus just holds up a hand, and says, “What’d I say about apologies, yesterday?”

“Something about them being bloody fucking moot,” Sirius admits.

Remus nods, and offers Sirius another cigarette. He accepts and leans in for Remus to light it again.

“So it was bad,” Remus prompts, after they’ve both taken a few drags.

“Which part are you asking about?” Sirius asks. He taps ash out onto the kerb. Somewhere in the distance, a car backfires, and it sounds like a gunshot. It sounds like a bombardment hex. “The running away from home bit, or the bit before I met Anna?”

“Both, if you want to talk about it,” Remus says.

Sirius sucks hard on his cigarette for a second, almost making himself cough from the ferocity of it. He exhales slowly, feeling the burn at the top of his lungs and in his nostrils, and says, “I never really wanna talk about it. Never have.”

“I know,” Remus says. “I think that has to change, if we’re gonna keep being friends.”

Sirius pushes the tips of his fingers into his chin and says, “What if I don’t want to be, anymore?”

Remus just smiles at him, and even in the darkness, Sirius can see the sadness of it.

There’s a lot of things Sirius wants to say. Some of them are sharp and barbed at the end. 

He considers telling Remus about how he’d been sure that he was in love with him, before he’d run away. Just to see his reaction, silhouetted against a flickering street lamp. To see how he’d pull away, and how the scars would bunch up on his skin as he tensed and stiffened.

Sirius considers telling him about the pneumonia, and how, in the hours before he’d stumbled to Anna’s shop, he’d wanted to fade away in a back alley. He’d thought about falling asleep, slumped over near a dumpster and a sour-smelling storm drain, and thought it wouldn’t be such a bad way to go. No one would’ve known it was him, anyway, and his eyes and thoughts had been so glassy and distant with fever, but he’d also felt like it was the first time in a while that he was thinking clearly about what he wanted.

And he considers telling Remus about the night he ran away from home. And the weeks leading up to it. About the stench of sulfur in Grimmauld Place, thickening and spreading as more and more dark hexes and jinxes and runes were cast carelessly throughout the house. About Regulus casually discussing dark marks and genocide over dinner, as if it were a regular, acceptable part of life.

About how his mum had perfected Legilimency, and Sirius hadn’t even realized until she’d already turned over all his thoughts and secrets, digging them up and examining them and hating every single thing she found. She’d used the Cruciatus Curse on him three times just that night, one of them right in front of his brother and father, who hadn’t even seemed to blink as he writhed and choked and screamed.

And even then--with every nerve shaking under his skin, with his heart beating too fast, and his eyes already squeezed shut for when the next curse would hit him--even then, it’d taken three days before he’d officially left for good.

Sirius doesn’t say any of that, though. Instead, he just sighs, and smokes his cigarette, and says, “I’ll need a bit of time, Remus.”

“As long as we have it,” Remus says. “As--as long as you’ll give me and James it, I mean.”

Sirius smiles gently at that. “I’m not foolish enough to believe I’ll get rid of you that quick. Either of you. And--I don’t want to, you know. I know I’ve apologized, but I don’t think I’ve said--or at least, I haven’t said  _ clearly… _ it’s not your fault. And I don’t blame you at all.”

“That’s…” Remus trails off, and then clears his throat. “Pads, I just…”

Then he reaches over, carefully, and pulls his arm across Sirius’s shoulders. He rests his cheek against Sirius’s shoulder for a moment, too. He smells stale, like he hasn’t washed in two days, and he smells like cheap Muggle fags, and like cedar aftershave and the musky pheromones of a wolf. 

He smells so much like Remus that Sirius can’t help but relax, and breathe it in, and can’t help but wonder how he forgot to miss this smell.

Remus isn’t a very touchy person, but he keeps his arm wrapped around Sirius, his other hand still pinched around his cigarette. Remus says, “What about the rest?”

“What do you mean?” Sirius asks, leaning slightly into him.

“Hogwarts. The Wizarding World. Euphemia, and Fleamont. Will you come back to all of it, or is it just me and James you’ll keep?”

And Sirius... Sirius really doesn't know.

“ Will you think less of me if I say I just want you and James, but nothing else?” he asks, because he knows that that's the answer Remus probably doesn't want to hear. Probably expects to hear.

Remus takes a drag of his cigarette, and says, “Absolutely not. But Euphemia and Fleamont really want to see you, you know. And they would’ve taken you in a heartbeat, when you left Grimmauld.”

Sirius nods. He crushes his fag underfoot, again, and already itches for another. 

He grabs Remus’s hand over his shoulder, pulls it tighter around him. Remus lets it happen.

“I don’t know,” Sirius finally says. “I just--I know I should’ve known all these things, but I couldn’t--it’s like I knew, and I didn’t know, at the same time, and I… it’s just, it’s hard to think like everyone else, sometimes. You’re asking me about--about the future, about the next year and the next weeks, and I. I can’t see past the next hour, sometimes. I never could, and I haven’t had to, for a while, but with you guys back, it’s just reminding me that that’s not… that’s not how people work, that’s not how life works. You’re asking me what I want, and I know a little bit about that. I want you and James. But you’re asking me about plans, about the Wizarding World and school and maybe even the bloody war…”

Sirius trails off, and scrubs a hand through his hair.

He can feel Remus looking at him, but he doesn’t look back. He doesn’t want to see the confusion there, or worse, the pity. He knows what it sounds like. It sounds like Sirius isn’t planning on living, much less anything else.

And that’s true enough, but he doesn’t know if he wants Remus to know that, or to understand it.

The problem isn't that he wants to end things or anything drastic like that. It's just that there’s too much for him. Instead of it being a slow, steady trickle of decisions and information, it’s a barrage. It’s a tidal wave slamming against a weak, cracked dam, and he has no idea how to deal with any of it. He never has. It’s why he ran away.

Remus, God bless him, says, “I’m asking the wrong questions, then.”

Sirius frowns, and turns to look at him. Remus's amber eyes glow and sharpen in the deep darkness of the morning.

“What?”

“I guess the right question,” Remus says, poking Sirius’s shoulder with his finger, “is this: What do you want to do for the next hour?”

“Oh,” Sirius says, swallowing. Absurdly, he feels like crying for a moment. But he pushes that down, along with a familiar swell of warmth for Remus.

“I guess,” Sirius says, “I want to smoke the rest of your pack, if you don’t mind. And watch the sun rise. And then buy some pastries for everyone when they wake up, and maybe make fun of James and Evans for sleeping in a dogpile.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” Remus says, smiling at him. 

***

That is, incidentally, exactly what they do.

And Remus’s arm doesn’t leave Sirius’s shoulders until they had to stand up. At which point, Remus threads his fingers through Sirius’s, and lets Sirius lead him to the bakery just down the corner, where Mr. Parker smiles at Sirius and gives him a discount on some apple turnovers.

It's a great morning. The first great morning for the both of them, in ages.

**Author's Note:**

> i know the overlap isn't huge, but i promise that if anyone's from my stranger things story, i'm working on it next. this is just something that gripped me and wouldn't let me go, which is incredibly annoying, considering how much of an asshole jkr is.


End file.
